


Together We're an Ocean

by PenPatronusAooO



Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Avengers Family, Bromance, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Feels, Clint Needs a Hug, Drama, Epic Battles, Epic Bromance, Family, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, PenPatronus, Protective Avengers, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Phil Coulson, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark Friendship, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Feels, Team as Family, Thor Feels, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 14:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 67,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10833534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenPatronusAooO/pseuds/PenPatronusAooO
Summary: STORY COMPLETE!The Battle of New York didn't automatically make the Avengers a flawless squad! To transform into the well-oiled machine of a team in 'Age of Ultron,' they must fight HYDRA, Enhanced, and each other! They struggle with dark secrets, wage epic battles against ZOMBIE CHITAURI, and form iconic friendships. Tony and Steve have lots of heart-to-heart conversations and Barton finds out if his SHIELD friends are on his side or HYDRA’s. The Avengers meet Dr. Cho and reunite with an old friend who turns out to be Clint’s brother-in-law. Bruce struggles to keep his injured teammates alive, New York City hosts a parade honoring them, and Tony disobeys Cap’s orders… Again.





	1. Feel the Bullet

**Author's Note:**

> “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” -Ryunosuke Satoro 
> 
> This story starts with Steve in the hospital after the climatic events of ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier.’

Tony Stark resembled a caged animal as he paced the elevator floor. He hit the number ‘7’ on the panel for the fourth time, and dragged his fingers down his face. The sterile, chemical scent of the hospital triggered raw memories of Happy covered in burns, of Pepper grimacing during the Extremis treatment, of his own surgery not even a month before when the shrapnel was finally removed from his heart, and of visiting a morgue to confirm that the dead bodies on the cold tables were his parents…

 

Sudden anxiety closed around Tony’s heart like a fist. Claustrophobia kicked him in the stomach. Sweat gathered on his forehead. He lifted his black t-shirt to his face, but hesitated when he remembered that it was splattered with drops of oil from his workshop. He hadn’t even bothered to put on clean clothes after Natasha called with the bad news: HYDRA was resurrected. SHIELD had all but fallen. Sitwell, Rumlow, and the Strike team had betrayed them all. Steve Rogers and Nick Fury were severely wounded…Or worse.

 

The elevator doors parted following an annoyingly chipper ‘DING.’ Tony wiped his hands on his dirty jeans and jogged out, his sneakers squeaking on the immaculate tile floor. Security guards stood outside every door. Three SHIELD agents in black uniforms aimed guns at his face. “This ward is closed!” one barked. “Authorized personnel only!”

 

“Show us some ID!” ordered another.

 

Tony sighed and rolled his eyes. “Are you KIDDING ME?” he demanded, gesturing at his own face.

 

Each agent did a double take. “Sorry, um, Mr. Stark,” the third said as he lowered his weapon. “With HYDRA and all… Captain Rogers is in the eighth room on the left.”

 

Tony felt dizzy. “He’s alive? Last I heard he was going into surgery. Did they get all the bullets out?”

 

The three agents performed a darn good impression of The Three Stooges when each one looked at the other for an answer. None of them had one. Tony growled and purposefully bumped his shoulders against them as he sprinted forward. “One, two, three,” he counted out loud as he passed each door, “four, five—”

 

“Tony!”

 

He took his eyes off the doors only because the voice sounded familiar. A woman threw herself into his arms. He barely managed to get his elbows between his bandaged ribs and her weight before she rammed into his fresh stitches. It looked like Natasha Romanoff, but Tony didn’t think it could be, because the Black Widow had never hugged him like this before, and she was trembling. “S-Sorry,” she whispered after nearly half a minute of clinging to him. “It’s just, um…” Nat gave Tony one last solid squeeze and took half a step backwards, but only after she wiped away the water in her eyes. Frazzled red hair clung to fresh perspiration on her cheeks and forehead. The emerald scrubs top she wore over her dirty black pants was two sizes too big.

 

Tony stumbled backwards when Nat suddenly used her thumb and middle finger to flick him right between the eyes. “What the hell was that for?”

 

Nat shrugged. “Just making sure you’re not wearing a camo mask. Call me paranoid, but it’s been a rough few days… For all of us.” She looked down at the floor and sniffed.

 

“Rogers?” Tony croaked. “Steve is… Is Steve…?”

 

“He’s all right,” Nat hiccupped. “I mean, he will be. Docs stopped the internal bleeding and, and… yes, he’s alive.”

 

Tony cupped her face with both hands. The pad of his thumb graced a bruise on her cheek. “And what happened to you?”

 

“Kicked ass.” Natasha shrugged. “And electrocuted myself,” she said. “Mildly.”

 

“I saw the news. I was about to hightail it to D.C. but the Helicarriers were already in the water.” Tony licked his lips. His face reddened. “Why didn’t you call me when this shit went sideways?” he whispered. “I thought you and I were copacetic. Or is it Fury who doesn’t trust me?”

 

“Calm down,” Natasha cautioned. “Stark, your chest was cracked open three weeks ago,” she said quietly, pointing at his heart but not actually touching him. “You’re in no shape to fight even if you had Iron Man. And by the way, why do you smell like a mechanic who spent the day under a city bus?”

 

“I’m fine. I’m healthy. 90% fine… 80%.” Tony stuffed his fists into his pockets and looked past her shoulder. “I was tinkering. Building. Finishing a new suit, actually.”

 

Nat squinted. “Thought you were done with Iron Man. You blew them up.”

 

“Yeah, well, I was, and then… Then an alien ship appeared in London, and Thor was hammering his way through Dark Elves, and I thought to myself, hmm, maybe destroying the best technology to defend this planet isn’t such a good idea.”

 

Natasha stared at him until he finally met her eyes. “Steve will be glad you’re here,” she said.

 

Tony swallowed. “Anything I should know?”

 

“He’s in bad shape, but…” Natasha nibbled on a chipped nail while she considered the question. “But he’s Steve Rogers, so it’s not as bad as it looks.”

 

Tony snorted. “I’m sorry, how many times was he shot again?”

 

Natasha bit her bottom lip.

 

Tony’s russet eyes glanced at the SHIELD agents around them. “How long until he can be moved?”

 

“Moved? Why?”

 

“I want him in the Tower,” Tony growled. He collected his thoughts for a moment, and rephrased. “I mean, he’d be safer in the Tower. You told me SHIELD is dead. We can’t trust anybody.”

 

Natasha squeezed his arm. “Tony, Steve’s ok. The best people we have are with him right now.”

 

Tony lowered his voice when a flock of nurses passed by. “You mean the best people SHIELD has, or the best HYDRA has? As I understand it, it’s pretty damn hard to tell the difference right now, Romanoff!”

 

The Black Widow offered him a small, patient smile. “It’s ok.” She took his hand. “Come on.”

 

The setting sun added a violet tint to the dim lighting in Steve Rogers’ hospital room. A man Tony didn’t recognize sat in a chair at Steve’s right with his boots up on the mattress. Romanoff didn’t attack the guy, so Stark assumed that he was on their side. Tony walked past the bathroom, past a doctor in a white lab coat, and ignored a nurse examining a blinking screen. He approached the bed almost on tiptoes, desperate to see his friend’s face and also dreading it. Natasha shut and locked the door behind them.

 

Tony braced his hands against the bed railing, and sighed.

 

Captain America lay on his left side with blankets up to his chest. One arm was splayed across his hip while the other cushioned his cheek. Nearly every square inch of skin that wasn’t bandaged was either bruised navy and purple or hooked up to a tube or wire. Steve’s face was turned, giving Tony a full view of the contusions on the right half of his chin, lips, cheekbones, and forehead. Tony started to sit on the mattress but jumped up before his ass landed. He started to sit on a nearby chair, but jumped up again before he got settled. Finally, he knelt on the floor—first one knee down, then the other—and rested his chin on the bed 18 inches away from Steve’s bruised nose. The room was so quiet that Tony’s sniff echoed in it.

 

A soft beep. Tony looked up at a computer terminal at the foot of the bed. Steve’s heartrate was gradually speeding up.

 

Cap’s eyelids clenched tighter. He frowned, licked dry lips, and opened brilliant blue eyes. It took him a moment to focus on the face in front of him and when he did, Steve reached out with a pale hand. “Tony.”

 

Stark took Steve’s hand in both of his. He cradled it like it was a newborn bird. “You look like crap, old man.”

 

Steve chuckled. “Missed you, too.”

 

“On my way here I remembered that you never paid me back for that shawarma buffet after New York. You owe me twenty bucks, Rogers.”

 

“Oh, THAT’S why you’re here?”

 

“What better time to pick your pocket?” Steve smiled at him with genuine affection. Tony blinked and looked away. “So, new rule,” he said. “A proposal, if you will. I’m just putting it out there. You don’t have to play along, it’s just a suggestion…”

 

Steve rolled his eyes. “Tony, there’s a pharmacy in my system. Two pharmacies. I can’t seem to stay awake for more than 10 minutes, so spit it out.”

 

Tony stared at their entwined hands. “We split up after New York. The Avengers scattered. I, uh, saved some flight attendants and the President of the United States. Thor saved the world and the entire… universe. And you, uh…” Tony looked at Natasha for help. “Did you guys do anything constructive or just blow up the Triskelion that my dad designed and the Helicarriers that I personally upgraded?”

 

Nat yawned against her hand to prove that he couldn’t get a rise out of her. “Those Helicarriers were about to assassinate millions of people,” she said, “including you.”

 

Tony nodded. “Yeah, ok, yeah.” He gave Nat a thumb’s up. “Good job. Well done.”

 

“Tony,” Steve sighed.

 

“Getting to the point. Getting to the point right now,” Tony assured him. “We make a good team, right? So, we should BE a team, right?”

 

Steve stared. “Too many drugs,” he whispered.

 

“Sorry.” Tony took a deep breath. “With SHIELD gone there’s just us, right? Avengers. And if one of us is doing Avenging stuff then we all should, right? I’m just saying that the next time Thor takes on extraterrestrial assholes, the next time you’re in a fistfight with your old BFF, contact me, alright? I’ll even leave in the middle of a date with Pepper if you ask nicely and promised a burger.”

 

Steve coughed. “So, you’re saying we should work together from now on. If someone’s in trouble, we all pull together. If we need help, we ask for it.” Tony nodded vehemently. His face fell when Steve’s cheeks reddened with fury. “’Let’s work together’ says the guy who took on an army of fire breathing, Enhanced terrorists on his own? Says the guy who was declared DEAD after his house fell into the Pacific?”

 

The steady beeps announcing Cap’s heartbeats sped up. “Steve,” Nat warned, “calm down.”

 

Tony recoiled. “Right—you’re right! You’re right. That was, well, not selfish, but, inconsiderate, I guess. Look, it was my fight, I wanted to keep you guys out of it but, maybe, yeah, maybe I should’ve, uh, mentioned that they didn’t kill me…”

 

“Damn right!” Steve said. “Tony, I woke up one morning, looked at the newspaper, and thought you were DEAD. We all did!”

 

Tony glanced at Natasha. She stared at her boots.

 

Sweat glistened on Steve’s face. “We all did, for days! DAYS! God, I stared into my closet for an hour trying to figure out what to wear to—to your—your funeral—” A coughing fit suddenly hit Steve. He bolted up into a sitting position, which tugged at the stitches in his abdomen, causing him to fall back down as quickly as he got up. He barely concealed a scream as a groan.

 

“Dammit—” Tony leapt up and grasped Steve’s wrist with one hand and patted his shoulder with the other. “God, Cap, take it easy. You can yell at me all you want when you’re feeling better. We’ll have a party and you can just eat cake and shout.” Steve rolled his eyes and started to respond, but ended up coughing even harder. “I’m sorry,” Tony repeated. “You’re right. I was an arrogant son of a bitch. I’m not—Cap, I’m not used to this—not used to the responsibility of keeping anybody but Pepper and Rhodey up to date on my… On myself. It was selfish, ok? I admit it. It was selfish of me not to let you know that I was alive ASAP. I’m sorry.”

 

Steve forced himself to breathe slowly. When he finally calmed down, he whispered, his tongue heavy from the drugs, “New York, too. You weren’t breathing, your glowing circle thing wasn’t… glowing. Thought you were dead. Still kind of hated your guts up until about a half an hour before that moment but, still…” Steve briefly chuckled, sighed, and looked at his friend through half-lidded eyes. Tony saw a desperate sincerity beyond the fog of drugs. “Don’t do that again, Tony. You… You don’t know what it felt like, what your death did to us. What it did to me. It was like…” Steve used his thumb and forefinger to mime a gun shooting his own heart. He pursed his lips together tight and shook his head back and forth. “You died, and it was like watching Bucky fall from that train all over again. No more of this lone wolf bullshit. The best teammates watch each other’s backs, but they also don’t go do something STUPID that could get themselves killed. I need you to understand that. If we’re going to be a team then I need to be able to trust that you won’t do something suicidal. I need you to take care of yourself. And I need you understand what you mean to me.”

 

Water flooded Tony’s eyes. “You mean that I mean a lot… to you?”

 

Steve rolled his eyes. “Dumbest genius I’ve ever met,” he sighed.

 

Stark’s nostrils flared. “Why?” he whispered. “I honestly don’t get it. I’m a hot mess and a half. I’m an arrogant, narcissistic, pain-in-the-ass-know-it-all. I break more things than I fix!” The heat behind Tony’s words increased his volume. “In my head, the only thing that redeems me is that I kept you and the others out of that Mandarin-Extremis circus, and here you are telling me that was the opposite of caring about you, so tell me!” Tony shouted. “Why the hell does Captain America give a damn about me at all?”  

 

Steve reached up and touched the oil-stained shirt that covered Tony’s heart. He didn’t speak.

 

Natasha put her hand over her eyes and collapsed into a chair.

 

Silence. Tony knelt beside the bed once more. He swallowed the lump in his throat and spoke calmly: slow and soft. “When Nat called me today you… You were Swiss cheese, Cap. Comatose.” Tony took two slow breaths: in and out, in and out. “I can’t imagine anyone feeling for me what I felt for YOU in that moment. I was so desperate to get to you that, hell, I don’t even remember driving here. Never thought I’d care about anyone like that other than Pep. But I did, you hear me? I mean, I do. I do care.” Tony flinched at his own vulnerability, then rested his chin on the bed again and shut his eyes. “I felt a bullet, too.”

 

A minute passed. Five more followed. No one said a word.

 

And then, finally, Steve relaxed, adjusted his pillow, reached over and slid the palm of his hand into Tony’s unruly dark hair. “What I mean to say,” he whispered, “what I should’ve said when I heard you were still alive was that I… I’m glad you’re ok. That’s what matters. You’re ok.”

 

Tony looked up. “Glad you’re ok, too.” He nodded. “So glad.”

 

Steve nodded back. Outside, the sun finished setting. The mood in the room shifted as if an ocean breeze had blown through. Steve yawned and settled deeper into his blankets.

 

Tony lowered his voice—lullaby soft. “Listen, I was just telling Nat that it might be smart to get you out of here. Stark Tower went through a little remodeling. I, uh, have a room just for you. For all of you. I’ll call Banner and have him doctor you. I’ll make JARVIS bring you orange juice. And I hear Barton is good at pancakes.”

 

Steve yawned again. “The private security here is pretty good, Stark.”

 

Tony wrinkled his nose. “You sure? Really sure? 100% because, if not, some of the best bodyguards in the world are on the Stark Industries payroll. Big dudes. Big, grumpy dudes ready to kick some HYDRA ass.” Tony mimed throwing a swing in boxing match, which earned a weary smile from Cap. “Seriously, man, I’ll get you out if you don’t feel safe here.”

 

Someone nearby cleared their throat—pointedly. Tony looked past Natasha and at the nurse for the first time. Agent Maria Hill cocked narrow eyebrows at him.

 

Someone else cleared their throat—pointedly. Tony looked at the doctor, and was only slightly surprised to see Bruce Banner hugging a clipboard against his white lab coat.

 

A third person cleared their throat—pointedly, but from above him. Tony slowly raised his eyes towards the ceiling and squinted at an air conditioning vent. “Barton?”

 

A finger snaked through the vent and waved.

 

Everyone turned at the sound of a toilet flushing. The bathroom door flew open and Thor emerged with Mjolnir, wearing his silver armor and red cape. He waved the hammer at Tony in a greeting.

 

“Like I said, this place is pretty secure,” Steve chuckled. “There might just be a team here…” he muttered as he fell asleep.

 

**To Be Continued**


	2. One for the Blooper Reel

Bruce Banner jumped over piles of bricks and ducked under tubes of mesh grating as he sprinted through the obstacle course of a corridor. The navy med pack on his back and the flashlight in his hand bounced with each step. “Steve?” he called at the darkness beyond a bent archway ahead. “Steve, can you hear me? You found some survivors?”

 

Captain America appeared from the darkness with a body in a fireman’s carry. “Just one,” he said somberly. “There are more bodies back there but he’s the only one who…” Cap coughed, wiped his face across his blue sleeve, then gently lowered the man onto the floor. “I think he’s conscious.”

 

“Cap, you’ve only been out of the hospital for 24 hours. Let one of us do the carrying, will you? Geeze, is this kid 18?” Bruce wondered when he knelt beside the stranger. “Looks like a tech. Have you met him?”

 

Steve walked a few steps away. He stood staring at the cracked wall with his hands braced on his hips.

 

Bruce didn’t repeat his question. Instead, he gently tapped the pads of his forefinger and middle finger against the young man’s pale, dust-covered cheek. “Can you open your eyes?” he asked. Bruce fished through three pockets before he found a wallet with a SHIELD ID in it. “Can you open your eyes, Cameron? Cameron Klein? “

 

Glazed brown eyes blinked. “Hear you,” the man whispered. Dust and dirt shook out of his unruly brown hair when he coughed. “Thought I was dead. The roof caved in. Thought I was toast. Are we… Is this a hospital?”

 

“You’re still in the Triskelion,” Banner said as he fished supplies out of his backpack. “Under it—what’s left of it. You’re lucky, kid. Local law enforcement gave up on looking for survivors 36 hours ago.”

 

Klein licked at a blood stain on his lower lip. “The Helicarriers,” he whispered. “Rumlow wanted me to launch the Helicarriers. I… I didn’t. Guns went off. We all ran…” Klein suddenly sat up and grabbed Bruce’s sleeve. “HYDRA! We have to tell the Avengers that HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD and…” Klein swayed a bit. Bruce steadied him, and then started pasting bandages over anything red. “Captain America,” Klein whispered. “Is—Is he ok? Did we win?”

 

Bruce heard Steve approach behind him. “Depends on what you mean by ‘we,’” Bruce said. “Whose side are you on?”

 

Klein’s eyes looked past Bruce. His jaw slowly fell and he blinked like he was trying to wake himself up from a dream. “Captain?”

 

“He’s on our side, Banner.” Steve knelt into a catcher’s position and patted Cameron’s hand. “Thanks for stalling Rumlow. Probably bought us some precious time. The Helicarriers are in the Potomac.”

 

Cameron blushed. “It wasn’t much. Seconds. Seconds, maybe. I—”

 

“Thank you,” Cap firmly repeated. “We’re going to get you to a hospital, all right? Just hang—”

 

A voice crackled in both Banner’s and Rogers’ earpieces. “ _I gotta skedaddle, guys_ ,” Clint Barton said. “ _Just heard back from that buddy of mine. He wants to meet up tonight_.”

 

“ _Whoa, wait_ ,” Natasha said over the coms, “ _no way you’re going by yourself. I know you have your hopes up, Clint, but everybody we’ve ever worked with could be HYDRA now, including Bloom_.”

 

“ _I’m going,_ _Nat_.”

 

“Slow down, Barton,” Cap ordered. “We need a plan.”

 

“And we need to finish up here,” added Bruce. “There might be more survivors.”

 

Tony spoke up from the other side of the Triskelion. “ _There aren’t. I just finished the sweep. Sent Thor to the tower with all of the salvaged tech we could dig out_.”

 

Bruce and Steve exchanged frowns. “The scepter?” Cap asked.

 

A long pause. “ _Not here_ ,” Tony said. “ _Maybe HYDRA got it before us. Maybe it was never here in the first place. Maybe…_ ” Tony sighed. “ _We gotta find that stick, Cap. HYDRA could do a lot of damage with it_.”

 

Nat groaned. “ _Our to-do list is getting pretty long, boys_.”

 

“ _We can cross one thing off it tonight_ ,” Barton reminded them. “ _Have a little faith, Nat. Not everybody’s HYDRA. We just gotta figure out who’s who. Bloom and I go way back, and I’m going to meet up with him tonight, Cap, whether we have a plan or not_.”

 

Rogers rolled his eyes. “Copy that. Everybody get to the Quinjet. We have to drop one soldier off at the hospital first.”

 

Cameron stared at Bruce as he and Cap got him up to his feet. “You’re Dr. Banner. Wow.” The awe on his face was as bright as when he recognized Cap. Klein suddenly shook Bruce’s hand, hard. “Doctor, I’ve been following your antielectron experiments since high school. Could I—maybe this is bad timing but—could I have your autograph?”

 

Bruce gave him a puzzled but polite smile. Above them, some section of the Triskelion shifted in its grave, and several bricks fell at their feet. “Let’s wait until after we’re out of the collapsing building,” Bruce replied.

 

Later, at midnight, the full moon above the outskirts of Washington D.C. glared down at a lone figure on the roof of a dilapidated office building. Bruce Banner scanned the streets through binoculars until he caught sight of a bulletproof black minivan with tinted windows and no plates. The driver entered the parking deck below and climbed five floors to the top. He pulled forward, did a tight donut, then backed up into a spot against the west wall. A crossbow peeked out of the window and shot bolts into both security cameras and two of the three lamps lighting the deck.  

 

“Barton is in position,” Banner reported over the coms at the exact same time that Clint said, “ _I’m in position_.”

 

Movement from the office building on the north side of the lot. Thor opened a window, glanced around, then waved up at Banner. “ _Friends, these lettered codes confuse me. What is Plan A again_?”

 

Cap stood two floors below Bruce, also leaning out a window directly across from the lot. “ _Thor, you’ve got to learn to pay attention in our team meetings_ ,” he scolded.

 

“In his defense, we only had 20 minutes to prep for this,” said Bruce. He lifted his binoculars again and looked up and down the adjacent roads.

 

“ _Plan A is where Barton asks this buddy of his for SHIELD’s last identification codeword_.”

 

“ _Wait, I thought that was Plan B_ ,” Tony said, speaking from the rear of the van. “ _Plan A is the one where Barton just tells him surrender and we figure out which team he’s on later_!”

 

“ _That’s C_!” said Romanoff.

 

“ _C probably won’t work if he’s SHIELD, and it definitely won’t work if he’s HYDRA_ ,” Clint said. “ _It’s one guy, not an army of Chitauri!_ _Plan D is our best shot_.”

 

Tony chuckled. “ _That won’t work! Romanoff’s wearing clothes_!”

 

“ _There are no plans that require me to take my clothes off_ ,” Natasha hissed.

 

“ _I know, I know! I’m just kidding—sheesh_.”

 

“ _Tony, this is no time to fool around_ ,” Cap growled.

 

Thor spoke up. “ _Barton said Plan D. That one I recall. But I do think that we should try A first_.”

 

“ _B is smarter than A_ ,” said Cap.

 

“ _But not as efficient as C_ ,” said Tony.

 

Natasha sighed loudly. “ _This is what happens when four alpha males try to run the show at the same time_.” She paused. “ _No offense, Bruce_.”

 

Banner ignored her. “Decide fast, guys. A white SUV just entered the third level.”

 

“ _Banner, you gotta tell me the moment you spot the target, not when it’s almost on my ass_!” Clint sputtered.

 

“Sorry! This is the first time I’ve ever been the, uh, what do you call it? The eyes?”

 

“ _Our second mission together is going SPECTACULARLY_!” The sarcasm in Nat’s voice was razor sharp.

 

“ _No time to vote_.” Clint jumped out of the bulletproof van weaponless, armed with nothing but his black uniform. “ _I’m calling it. We’re doing D_.”

 

Bruce frowned. “I hate D,” he said more to himself than the others.

 

“ _Here we go_.”

 

The SUV parked directly across from Clint. It shut down, but the lights remained on, casting Barton in a bright spotlight. Not one, but ten guys in black fatigues, boots, and ski masks emerged with their handguns up. Clint immediately raised his hands in surrender.

 

Panic choked up Bruce’s throat. “That’s, uh, more than one guy!”

 

“ _How many_?” Nat asked.

 

“Ten. Ten that I can see.” Bruce leveled his binoculars and zoomed in on the newcomers. “Berettas. Knives. Grenades.”

 

Breaths hitched. “ _Bad sign, Barton! Sounds like an ambush_ ,” said Tony. 

 

“ _Abort_ ,” Cap declared. “ _Barton, get back in the van and we’ll extract you_!”

 

“ _Negative,_ ” Clint said. Bruce zoomed in on the archer and witnessed Barton’s ventriloquist skills. He kept his mouth perfectly still in front of the new audience. “ _All this tells us is that he’s cautious. Nat, I was in Bloom’s wedding. I gotta know_.”

 

“ _Moscow gambit_?”

 

“ _If you feel up to it_.” Clint frowned and chewed hard on his bottom lip. “ _Nat, this could go sideways fast. If it was anyone else—”_

 

“ _I know. I’ve got your back,_ ” Romanoff replied. “ _I’ll be ready_.”

 

“ _What are Barton and Romanoff speaking of_?” Thor asked the group.

 

“ _Pretty sure they’re doing their own plan now_ ,” Tony sighed.

 

“ _Stark, I need you to keep an eye on Natasha’s tracker_ ,” Clint ordered. “ _Don’t lose her_.”

 

All of the playfulness exited Tony’s voice. “ _Copy that. I’ve got her_.”

 

A tall, slim figure twirling a knife in each hand separated from the group and removed a ski mask. The man had wavy, startling ginger hair and a scar on his right cheek in the shape of an ‘x.’ Bruce didn’t think he’d ever seen a smile so big. “ _Barton, old buddy_!”

 

“ _Bloom_.” Clint slowly lowered his arms. “ _Good to see you, man. How’s your dad_?”

 

Bloom shrugged. “ _Arthritis is a bitch. How about we skip the foreplay, old friend? I’ll go first_.” Bloom sheathed his knives and asked, “ _How did you and I first meet_?”

 

Clint rolled his eyes. “ _This one shouldn’t count. There were too many witnesses in the cafeteria that day you ‘accidentally’ mixed tapioca into my mashed potatoes. What was the last class we had together at the academy_?”

 

“ _Tactical driving. Pierce almost kicked us out for racing. My turn. Which leg did I break in the HYRDA Games_?”

 

“ _It was your wrist. Your right one. Come on, dude, think of something better_.” Clint took another cautious step forward. “ _What’s my sister’s name_?”

 

“ _You have a brother_.”

 

Over the coms, Thor asked, “ _What are they doing_?”

 

“ _Barton has a brother_?” Tony pondered.

 

Bloom continued. “ _Why are you giving me a hard time when your questions are just as shitty_?”

 

“ _I give you shit. That’s what I do_.” Both men walked closer. “ _Are we done yet_?” Clint asked.

 

“ _One more_ ,” Bloom insisted. His hand returned to his weapons. “ _Our last year at SHIELD academy, I struck out with that blonde new girl… Sharon something. What color shirt was she wearing when she slapped me in the middle of archery practice_?”

 

Bruce watched Barton roll his eyes again. “ _She wasn’t wearing a shirt. You ‘accidentally’ wandered into the girls’ locker room like a horny teenager and took a picture of her with a button cam on your basketball jersey. Basketball jerseys don’t even have buttons_!” A chuckle erupted from deep in Bloom’s stomach. He and Barton shook hands, and then shared a brief hug followed by double slaps on the shoulders. “ _Are we done NOW_?”

 

“ _Yeah_ ,” said Bloom, “ _we’re done. You’re who you say you are, I’m who I say I am. Agreed_?”

 

“ _Agreed_.” Clint paused, and then said, “ _Hail HYDRA_.”

 

“ _Oh, shit, what a plan,_ ” Tony gulped.

 

“ _If they’re SHIELD, they’ll arrest him,_ ” Romanoff explained. “ _If they’re HYDRA, they’ll welcome him, and he can infiltrate their inner circle_.”

 

The team held its breath. Barton didn’t even blink.

 

Bloom’s grin widened. “ _Well, well, well_ … _Hawkeye himself is on the team?_ _Hail HYDRA_.”

 

“ _Hail HYDRA_ ,” said the other agents. All nine lowered and sheathed their weapons.

 

Bloom shook his head back and forth as he laughed. “ _Damn, it’s good to hear that from you, Barton. Bizarre times, man. I watched the shit hit the fan at the Triskelion but, hell, I wasn’t even in the states_.”

 

“ _I was off the grid, too_ ,” Barton explained. “ _Now I’m just_ _trying to figure out who’s with SHIELD and who’s with us. Confusing as hell with all of the compartmentalization. Don’t know who’s loyal. Didn’t know you were loyal to the cause, and you’re one of my best friends_!”

 

“ _That I am_ ,” said Bloom. “ _Honestly, Barton, with you being one of Fury’s little favorites, I always thought we’d end up shooting at each other if SHIELD officially split_.”

 

“ _Occurred to me, too_ ,” Clint admitted. “ _Wasn’t sure I could pull the trigger, but, you have to prioritize the cause even over your friends, right_?”

 

“ _Yeah. Yes, you do. We both do_.”

 

“ _Sounds foreboding_ ,” said Thor.

 

“Bad feeling about this,” said Bruce.

 

Bloom squinted. “ _And you’re prioritizing HYDRA over your superhero Avenger buddies? Over Natasha Romanoff? Everyone knows Black-Hawk is an inseparable pair. Romanoff is on Captain America’s side and yet, here YOU are_. _Not too much to ask you to prove your loyalty, is it_?”

 

Clint held up his forefinger. “ _Thought that might be an issue. Luckily, I came prepared_.” The archer returned to the bulletproof van and wretched the sliding door open. A figure tumbled right out and rolled across the pavement.  

 

Blood-colored paint showed through the dozens of rips in Natasha Romanoff’s uniform. Disheveled red hair covered half of her face, and the other half sported several faux fist-sized bruises. Thick silver duct tape kept her screams silent and the cuffs around her ankles and wrists kept her immobile. She strained against her bonds and tried to roll up onto her knees, but Bloom sent her crashing back down with one punch. Real blood leaked from Natasha’s nose. Bloom licked his lips when she looked up at him. Her slim, trembling form fit entirely inside of his shadow.

 

“Oh, God,” Bruce whispered. “Barton’s just going to turn her over to them?”

 

“ _If they take her, we’ll be able to follow them to their HQ_ ,” Steve reasoned. “ _Might be our best shot to find the biggest HYDRA nest in the city_.”

 

“ _And if they just kill her right here and now_?”

 

No one replied.

 

“ _What do you say_?” Clint asked Bloom with his arms fanned out in supplication. “ _What better proof that I’m HYDRA_?”

 

Bloom clapped his gloved hands together three times. “ _Bravo, Barton_ ,” he said. “ _My superiors will be impressed_.”

 

“ _Impressed_?” Clint snorted. “ _I expect a raise_!”

 

“ _A HYDRA agent’s pockets are always full_.” A Cheshire cat’s smile stretched across Bloom’s face. “ _And mine will overflow when I tell take credit for Romanoff’s death, AND FOR YOURS_.” Bloom unsheathed one knife. Nine guns once again aimed at Clint.

 

“They’re gonna kill them both!” Bruce yelped.

 

“ _I have a clear view_ ,” Steve reported.

 

“ _I am in position_ ,” Thor said. “ _I can defend them_.”

 

“ _I’m closer, Thor_.”

 

“ _You’re supposed to stay out of this one, Cap_ ,” Tony said. “ _Don’t do what I think you’re about to. You’ll rip your stitches_.”

 

“ _Hey_ —” Clint stepped forward but froze when every gun cocked. “ _Come on, Bloom. Day one, remember? Are you really gonna screw me like this_?”

 

“ _Don’t take it personally. This is business, Barton. And, you know what? I actually don’t care whose side you’re on_.” Bloom didn’t blink as he spoke. “ _Dumping two dead Avengers at my boss’ feet is better than one_.”

 

Bruce saw Barton’s fingers twitch for a bow that wasn’t there. His eyes flickered back and forth between Bloom’s smile and the knife in his hands. “ _You could at least have the decency to shoot me and get it over with fast_.”

 

“ _I prefer fun over decency_.” Bloom pinched the double-edged blade between his fingers and aimed at Clint’s neck. “ _Goodbye, old friend_.”

 

Clint gulped. “ _Pancakes_ ,” he whispered, speaking the codeword barely a second before Bloom threw the blade.

 

So very many things happened in so very few seconds:

 

Mjolnir sailed into the scene from the north side of the deck.

 

Captain America’s shield flew in from the south.

 

Both the hammer and the shield were perfectly timed to block the knife, and maybe they would have if they hadn’t collided. Instead, they bounced off each other in mid-air and the blade sneaked between them.

 

Clint leapt up and to his right. Instead of puncturing his throat, the knife embedded in the top left quarter of his chest. He crashed into the van, crumpled to the ground, half-rolled onto his back, and went still.

 

Natasha slipped out of her ankle restraints and kicked Bloom’s legs out from under him. She rolled under the van and started picking the lock of her handcuffs.

 

Bloom recovered. “ _Dammit, fire_!” Every HYDRA agent turned and shot their Berettas in the directions the hammer and shield had come from. Bullets blasted through red bricks and windows and low hanging telephone wires. Bruce saw Tony kick at the minivan’s double doors from the inside, but they only opened halfway. Clint had parked too close to the cement blocks protecting the edge of the parking deck. Tony blasted the doors open with his repulsors. The force of it caused the van to roll forward several inches—not far enough to run over Natasha Romanoff’s arm, but just far enough to catch her sleeve and pin her down. The red and silver Iron Man suit cartwheeled out of the van and rammed into three of Bloom’s men so hard that they all tumbled over the side of the deck.

 

Mjolnir circled back around to Thor, who leapt out of the shadows of the office building using Cap’s shield to block the bullets. Simultaneously, Steve Rogers jumped from his window and landed beside an unmoving Barton. With a grunt, he yanked the knife out of Clint’s chest and slashed Natasha’s sleeve, freeing her from the tire. Nat scrambled over to her partner, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him to the other side of the vehicle. Bruce expected to see blood gushing from Barton’s chest, but there was none.

 

Bloom ducked behind his men and tossed a smoke grenade into the fray. A dark cloud of black fog erupted, and anyone with their mouths open started coughing. Thor hammered one agent aside, tossed Cap his shield, then swung Mjolnir like a baseball bat and sent his next target rolling down the ramp. Bloom’s last remaining minions took aim. Thor ducked behind the bulletproof van to avoid one onslaught, and Cap behind his shield to block the other. The bullets that ricocheted off the Vibranium caught the ascending Tony in the face and sent him reeling.

 

A bullet whizzed past and Natasha draped her body protectively over Barton’s. “ _Talk to us, Banner_!” she shouted over the gunfire.

 

“I—they—uh—” Bruce stuttered. “Lots of guns!” he exclaimed. “I guess, um, stay behind the van…?”

 

Nat unsheathed a GLOCK. “ _Tell me which way to aim! My 12:00? 9?”_

 

“I don’t, uh—”

 

“ _Banner, we can’t see_!” Steve shouted.

 

“I can’t either! Wait, wait, the smoke’s clearing—” Bruce looked through the binoculars for the remaining men. “They’re retreating… They’re all in the SUV… They’re getting away!”

 

Cap and Thor pressed forward. A lightning bolt cut through the black fog. Thor missed the vehicle, but sliced a billboard in half. Steve suddenly stopped running and wrapped one arm around his stomach. The last of the smoke dissipated.

 

And then, Bloom rolled his window down and Bruce watched, horrified, as the HYDRA agent chucked out what looked like a grenade the size of a watermelon. “BOMB!” Banner shouted. “Big—Really big— **RUN**!”

 

The SUV squealed as it drove away.

 

Tony fell from the sky. He belly-flopped onto the grenade and folded his limbs over it like it was fumble in a football game.

 

Bruce heard the explosion, but didn’t see it. He was already racing down the stairs.

 

**To Be Continued**


	3. Terrible Privileges

The moment Steve Rogers saw the bomb, he knew there was only one way any of them could possibly survive. Fortunately, Romanoff was already two steps ahead. She’d shoved Barton’s limp body into the bulletproof van, and stood at the sliding door waving for Steve and Thor to get in. They had a minute, maybe only a second to get to safety—there was no way to tell. Blood leaked from Steve’s ripped stitches and slowed his stride. He wouldn’t have made it if Thor hadn’t shoved him from behind, sent him soaring into the vehicle, and slammed the door shut behind him. Less than a second later, the bomb exploded.  

 

Steve expected a deafening roar of thunder. He expected the van to flip over a dozen times and, if it didn’t shatter, to roll off the deck. He expected fire to sneak through every minuscule fissure in the steel and sear off their skin. Instead, he heard crashes. He smelled smoke, but didn’t feel the fire. Something that had to be Thor’s head or his hammer—or possibly both—smashed against the door as the van slowly tipped over onto its side. Steve pushed against a seat and managed to maneuver his body under the assassins, catching the pair in the silver bowl of his shield and cushioning their heads. Silence followed. A silence that lasted nearly thirty seconds. And then, Steve heard something metallic crash into the pavement nearby. He waited another half of a minute before kicking the windshield and crawling out. Nat followed and, together, they tugged Clint out of the wreckage.

 

Natasha covered her mouth against the smothering gray smoke. “I got him,” she said, her watery eyes bloodshot. Barton twitched when she cupped his cheeks between her palms. “Kevlar body armor blocked the worst of it.” Nat folded back a strip of ripped fabric crisscrossing Barton’s chest, and pointed at the shallow pool of blood beneath a puncture in a plate of armor. “He’ll be ok.” Steve nodded, and left Clint in Natasha’s hands.

 

Smoke covered the entire parking deck like a fog. Fissures in the pavement darted around piles of burning debris. Thor’s face lay inches away from the van’s rear passenger side tire—which was on fire. Steve yanked him aside by his cape, made sure the unconscious god was still breathing, and then dragged him over to Natasha.

 

“Cap!” a voice called from the opposite end of the deck. “STEVE!”

 

Rogers left his shield behind and jogged blindly in the direction of the familiar voice. “Doc?”

 

“Over here!” The smoke parted, and Steve discovered Banner kneeling beside a burnt, dented, twisted, cracked Iron Man lying face down in a man-shaped crater only ten feet from a giant hole. Banner had emptied an entire fire extinguisher can on the suit. “I think he’s unconscious but I can’t—he’s too heavy—I can’t lift him,” Bruce gasped. “Roll him over, Cap, quickly.”

 

“God, Tony.” Rogers ignored the new bruises on his back and the fresh blood pooling beneath his shirt. His gloves protected his skin from the heat, but the acrid stench of burnt metal singed his nostrils. “Thought we were all dead,” he admitted to Bruce as he gently, gradually flipped Stark over. “Thought that bomb would take down this whole structure.”

 

Bruce pocketed his glasses. His voice shook when he spoke. “It should’ve,” he whispered. “It would’ve, but—but I think Tony directed the majority of the blast into himself.”

 

“How the hell did he do that?”

 

“Wrapped the suit around it. Angled his limbs so that most of the energy went up instead of in every direction. Sent him flying—probably ten stories or more. Look at this damage! Temperatures had to reach at least 800 degrees Fahrenheit to warp the titanium like this…” When Tony landed on his back, Bruce immediately paled and dragged his fingers down his face. “Oh, shit.”

 

“Oh, shit,” Steve parroted. The front torso of the suit had all but fused together into one stretch of red and silver titanium. It had bulged and then solidified in a rippling motion that resembled ocean waves. Terror briefly froze Steve, but then he shook it away and ripped the expressionless Iron Man facemask off like a Band-Aid. Dizziness quickly followed relief when a very red-faced Stark opened his eyes and blinked up at him. Tony’s eyes started to roll back into his skull, but opened wide again when Banner lay his hand across his sweaty forehead. Stark’s five o’clock shadow scratched Steve’s fingers when he cupped his palm against Tony’s cheek. “Tony, take a deep breath. You’re ok. You’re with us. You’re all right.”

 

Stark’s tongue licked away the blood on his lips. Bruise-colored half-moons stood out beneath his closed eyes. Blood stained his nostrils and lower lip, and dripped from both ears. “Aloe,” Tony whispered. “Aloe, please. From the fridge. Bad sunburn.”

 

Steve and Bruce exchanged thankful looks. “Your face is a little red,” Steve told Stark. “Thought you were just embarrassed that you fell on your ass—again.”

 

Bruce examined the light burns covering Tony’s face and neck. “Your eyebrows look a little scorched but at least your hair is still there.”

 

Tony’s jaw dropped in faux horror. “What about the goatee? Dear God, not the goatee!”

 

“HYDRA agents just escaped and you’re worried about your facial hair?” Steve rebuked.

 

Tony swallowed and sighed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but we took on an army of aliens a while back, didn’t we? And, yet, we just got our collective asses kicked by ten humans. Calculate that for me, Banner.”

 

Bruce shrugged. “It was like watching a cartoon from my point of view. Some clumsy Donald Duck bit. Everything that could go wrong, did. Pretty sure I even saw Thor trip over his own cape.”

 

“So very sorry I missed that.” Stark held his arms out like a toddler for his mother. “Help me sit up, will you? You might have to, uh, bend me a bit.”

 

The metal was still too hot for Bruce’s bare hands, but Steve’s gloves protected his. Joints creaked. Gears squeaked. Rogers had to brace his legs against the side of the shallow crater to gain enough leverage to pull Iron Man up into a sitting position. Tony winced at the movement. The few patches of unburned skin paled. “Oh, wow, everything’s all mangled in here. Plates shift when I move. Heavy. They pinch. And… bleeding,” Tony grunted.

 

Steve gripped his shoulder. “Where else are you bleeding?

 

Stark snorted. “You’re bleeding, Captain Dumbass.”

 

Bruce cocked his head to the side to get a better look at Steve’s guts. “We should take you back to the hospital,” Banner recommended. “You might be bleeding internally again.”

 

Steve shook his head. He wiped his forehead against his sleeve and mixed dirt into his sweat. “I don’t want to go back there. Let’s patch everybody up at home.”

 

“Home?” Tony smiled proudly. “Are you calling my big ugly building HOME?”

 

Steve rolled his eyes. “Natasha says my apartment is probably boobytrapped. Don’t look so pleased, Stark. Your mattresses are too soft.”

 

“If that’s your only complaint then that’s a victory for me.” Tony wiggled the gauntlet around his left wrist, then tugged at the metal warped against his right shoulder. “You aren’t jealous that Banner has a bigger room?” A few clicks echoed from inside Tony’s suit as if a dozen sprockets had fallen down his front.

 

Bruce smiled. “And a fountain.”

 

“Barton has a balcony.” Tony coughed again—then coughed harder. “Speaking of which, is Clint—Is B-Barton—” Tony cleared his throat and took a deep breath. Trembling fingers went to his chest. “Is—he…”

 

Suddenly, Tony’s eyes widened to their limits. He opened his mouth to speak but only managed a guttural gasp. He reached out and grabbed both Banner and Rogers’ sleeves. “Tony?” Bruce leaned closer. “Tony, what is it?”

 

Stark’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He shook his head back and forth. Somehow his eyes widened even further.

 

“Tony, you gotta talk to us, tell us what’s wrong,” Steve insisted.

 

Stark’s entire body buckled. Water overflowed from his eyes. He toppled onto his back.

 

“Oh God, Steve, he can’t breathe,” Bruce realized.

 

“What? Why?”

 

“Tony, open the suit up.” When Stark didn’t, Bruce gave JARVIS the same order. The AI managed a meek peep before it went mute.

 

“Dammit, he’s stuck.” Bruce slid one finger into the narrow gap between Tony’s neck and the collar. “The heat must have warped the inside of the suit! The chest plate is squeezing him too tight. Tony, TONY! Take it easy. Take slow, shallow breaths.”

 

Stark nodded. He shut his eyes and struggled for control, but it was too late. Panic had set in. His body seized.

 

Steve grabbed his shoulders and held him still. “Bruce, what do we do?”

 

Banner’s fingers trailed over Tony from head to foot. “There’s got to be a manual release or space enough for a crowbar or—”

 

“ _HE’S A CROWBAR_ —!” Tony managed to pant with the last of his oxygen.

 

Bruce rolled back on his haunches. “Cap, get him out of the suit.”

 

“What?” Steve shook his head. “If I just start pulling things I—I’ll hurt him.”

 

“He’s getting crushed to death in there!” Tony’s lips turned blue. “Rip. It off him. NOW!” Bruce yelled.

 

The pain around Steve’s stitches warned him to stay still. The pain in Tony’s eyes overruled it. Steve found a fissure in the suit’s collar, summoned all his super soldier strength, and pulled the cracked section apart. Plates of titanium groaned and whined and shifted. Steve separated the metal from Tony’s chest by an inch, then two, and then three before blood loss caught up with him and his arms lost their strength. More blood seeped through his uniform. A drop landed on Tony’s chest.

 

“I—I don’t think I— I can—” Steve gasped.

 

“Thor’s stronger.” Bruce pivoted towards the overturned van. “Thor!” he shouted. “THOR!”  

 

“He’s out—knocked out,” sputtered Steve. Cap took a deep breath and tried one more time. Light streaks of dust and mud glistened on his forehead and he clenched his teeth so tight that a molar cracked. Tony’s eyes rolled. He shuddered one last time, then went still. “No!” Steve shouted.

 

“Stand back,” Bruce said in a resigned voice. “Way back.”

 

Steve started to argue, but Bruce’s eyes already glowed green. Cap stumbled backwards with his palms up. “Go easy on him,” Steve whispered to both Bruce and The Hulk.

 

“We’ll try.” Bruce shut his eyes and held his breath. He placed his hands where Steve’s were. Muscles in his neck shuddered and flexed. His fingers turned green, followed by his hands, followed by the rest of his skin. Goosebumps sprang up. Tendons twitched. Green eyes flashed open. The Hulk erupted out of Bruce’s body with a deafening roar and turned the Iron Man suit into shrapnel in seconds with the precision of a bull in a china shop. Screws, wires, bullets, hinges, sprockets, and crumpled fistfuls of metal went flying in every direction. Then, he pounded both fists against his chest, took a running start, and leapt from the parking deck to the nearest roof. He disappeared two jumps later.

 

Rogers sprinted back to Stark. The Hulk was ruthlessly thorough. Not a single square inch of metal was within ten feet. Rips in Tony’s clothing and the blood seeping from shallow slashes betrayed where the creature’s fingernails had gotten too close. Steve put the back of his hand against Tony’s mouth, then folded forward and pressed his ear almost against Tony’s lips. “Tony? Tony, wake up…” Steve found a pulse, but no breaths. “TONY!”  

 

Hands grabbed Steve’s elbow. Natasha. Steve switched places with her so he could standby to pump Tony’s heart while Natasha breathed for him. She tipped his head back and huffed air down Tony’s throat once… twice… three times. “Come on, Stark,” she whispered.

 

The deck went silent. Steve’s heartbeats pounded like drums in his ears.

 

A soft inhale—an even softer exhale—and suddenly Stark started to cough violently. He sat up, immediately started to collapse back down, but was caught by two pairs of arms.

 

“There he is,” Nat exclaimed with false cheerfulness.

 

Steve and Natasha held Tony close while he hacked and gasped for nearly five minutes. When he finally caught his breath enough to speak, he whispered, “Where’s—Where’s Bruce? Did he…?”

 

Steve nodded. “Hulk freed you.”

 

Natasha suddenly darted forward and kissed Tony on the cheek. “Saw you tackle that bomb, you idiot,” she whispered. “Almost got yourself killed. Again.”

 

Tony stretched the flight suit collar away from his throat. He relaxed in their arms and allowed his body to tilt to the side until his cheek landed against Cap’s chest. Steve held still. “Shit went down fast. Should’ve come up with a better plan. I should’ve stayed in the air. Steve should’ve stayed home. Barton should’ve been armed…”

 

“Don’t blame Clint,” Natasha nearly begged. “He still beats himself up about Loki brainwashing him. Punishes himself every day.”

 

“That wasn’t his fault, and neither was this,” Steve assured her. “Could’ve been worse.” Steve discovered himself unconsciously combing his fingers into Tony’s hair. “Natasha, Sam Wilson works with veterans who have PTSD. Might be smart to officially introduce him and Clint. Might help. Couldn’t hurt.”

 

Nat’s chin bobbed against her chest like she was grieving. “Dammit, he needed a win. Can’t believe Bloom tried to kill him. They were so close…” She glanced at her teammates, then looked aside. “Next time we need to test an agent’s loyalty, Barton and I will go alone. No reason to put the whole team at risk.”

 

“No,” said Cap, sharper than he intended.

 

Tony pointed at her, Steve, and then himself. “Team,” he whispered.

 

Cap nodded. “We’re alive. You know that’s what matters.”

 

Natasha wiped away the blood beneath her nostrils. “We’re alive,” she agreed, wearily. “We’ll heal. We’ll find Bruce. We’ll do better next time.”

 

“No capes,” Tony suggested softly.

 

Steve suddenly felt dizzy from blood loss. He braced a fist against the ground to keep himself upright, and Tony comfortable. He beheld the cracked pavement, the burning debris, and the totaled van. He stared at Tony’s chest heaving up and down. Behind them, Thor lifted his head and looked around. Clint stood next to him with his hands braced against his knees. Police, ambulance, and fire sirens approached. “Now what?” Steve wondered. “Extraction plan… I forget…”

 

“Hill’s coming.” Natasha looked up at the moon. “Let’s go home.”

 

Off in the distance, beyond the smoke and the sirens, the Hulk roared.

 

**To Be Continued**


	4. Resting Uncomfortably

 

The front door of Avengers tower opened for Dr. Helen Cho a millisecond before she knocked on it. “ _Please proceed to the elevator at the end of the hall_ ,” a bodiless voice said with a British accent. Helen hefted her bag of medical supplies, wrapped her caramel-colored jacket tighter, and listened to her own heels clack against the spotless hardwood floor. The white elevator door opened when she reached it, and the number ‘9’ already glowed on the panel. “ _Please enter the third door on the left_ ,” the same voice requested. “ _Mr. Stark is expecting you_.”

 

Harried voices and bright lights greeted Helen on the ninth floor. Door number three was open, but she still knocked on the frame before she stepped inside. She saw the guns first—two pointed directly at the space between her eyes. “Not a bad guy!” she cried. A slim, redheaded woman—Natasha Romanoff, Helen remembered—and a bandaged, muscled man with a chiseled fist of a face continued to scowl until a familiar voice ordered them to relax. Once she sheathed her weapon, Romanoff picked up an ice pack and pressed it against her swollen nose. The man—Clint Barton, Helen remembered—collapsed back onto his bed and hugged the bandages crisscrossing his chest. Romanoff took his hand and squeezed.

 

“Sorry about that, Doctor,” Tony Stark said with a voice that resembled a lifelong smoker’s. “It’s been a long night, and the assassins are a little trigger-happy.” Tony lay under a sheet in a propped-up hospital bed that undoubtedly cost more than Helen’s apartment. “Sorry I missed your presentation at Harvard yesterday. Tissue regeneration, huh? Helping plastic surgeons make the world a more beautiful place?”

 

Helen recovered from the initial shock and lifted her chin. “The device my team is working on could remove a wart,” she said with a delicate voice in accented English, “but I am far more interested in regenerating internal organs.” The doctor nodded a greeting at Captain America, who lay in a bed on Stark’s left. Two vials of blood had already emptied into his body and he was soaking up a third fast. His gray-tinged face resembled a corpse more than a super-soldier. Cap waved at her with two fingers.

 

Tony gestured at her like a circus ringmaster at the main attraction. “Guys, meet Dr. Helen Cho. She was kind enough to consult on a recent surgery.” Stark pointed at the center of his chest where the arc reactor used to be. “Patched me up with some skin grafts that may or may not have come from my own ass.”

 

“Your follow-up appointment was a week ago, Tony. Judging by the bruising around your throat, you disobeyed my order to avoid crimefighting for at least six months.” Helen crossed the room to Stark’s bedside. “And I assume you sent a car for me at 3am for something more important than swimsuit season?”

 

“Got barbecued a bit.” Tony sat up and allowed the sheet to slide into his lap. His shoulders, chest, and arms were so bright red that they seemed to glow. His abdomen was angry red—blistered and dark.

 

“More like flame broiled!” Helen winced at the sight of the popped and weeping blisters. “What happened?”

 

“Bomb.” Tony shrugged. “I was in a suit,” he explained when Helen stared at him.

 

Dr. Cho opened her bag and took out a tube of topical antibiotics she’d created herself. “How are you not yelling in pain?” she whispered.

 

Captain America stared at them. Tony avoided his teammate’s eyes and said, “Practice.”

 

Cho applied the anesthetic to a thin, porous bandage. “I saw that Stark Industries made quite a sizable donation to my lab. I’m grateful, Mr. Stark.”

 

Tony shivered when the cold bandage touched his flaming skin. “Tech like yours may come in handy someday.”

 

Footsteps in the hallway. Barton and Romanoff raised their guns once more. A giant of a man entered the room and dropped a naked body on an open bed beside Steve. His red cape, silver armor, and blond hair were all soaking wet. “I found Hulk in the Atlantic,” Thor announced. “I think he ate a dolphin.” Natasha scurried over to Bruce’s side. Banner was unconscious, and pale. Goosebumps bloomed across his naked body and he trembled when the Tower’s air conditioning blasted on his wet skin. Nat wiped him down with a towel and then draped a blanket over him.

 

Helen had seen pictures of the extraterrestrial known as Thor—everyone had—but up close he truly looked like a god—bigger and handsomer than she’d imagined. Almost radiant. She stared at him for so long that Tony snapped his fingers in front of her nose to get her attention. “Down, girl,” he chuckled. Thor dropped his hammer and collapsed into a chair with an exhausted groan.

 

A slim woman with a stern face and a flawless skintight black uniform entered the room with a a small suitcase and three large pizzas. “You know, when I worked for SHIELD, my assistant’s assistant picked up the food,” said Maria Hill.

 

“When you worked for SHIELD you got paid half as much,” Tony pointed out.

 

Maria handed the suitcase to Thor, who took out black slacks and a purple shirt and, with Natasha’s help, dressed the unconscious Banner. Thor then took a box of pizza and scarfed down three slices in under a minute. Maria retrieved a tablet and sat at the foot of Cap’s bed. After grunting and hissing air between his teeth, Clint rose and helped Tony roll onto his side so that Helen could look at the burns on his under arms. Cap sat up when Stark suddenly yelped after Helen’s petite fingers grazed his ribs. Water filled Stark’s eyes but he blinked it away. “Bruised, cracked, or broken?” Clint asked before Steve could. He nodded at the inventor’s ribs when Tony tried to pretend that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

 

“Go mother Rogers, will you, Feathers? He won’t even let anyone look at his bullet wounds.” Stark blinked up at Barton, and spoke again only after he lowered his voice. “Sorry about your buddy, buddy.”

 

Clint sighed through his nose. He sized up Helen with a quick glance, and must have determined that she wasn’t any sort of threat, because he spoke honestly. “Thought I knew Bloom. Last guy I’d ever suspect. Knows me better than my—than anyone else. Can’t believe my best friend tried to kill me. Can’t believe it.”

 

Tony waited for Barton to stop shaking his head. “Don’t suppose you got a good look at his eyes?”

 

“No, maybe—why?”

 

“Because what—” Blisters popped on Tony’s shoulder and he winced. “Because what if—” Stark hissed and growled at his physician.

 

“Sorry,” Helen said softly. “I know it hurts, Tony. The anesthetic will kick in soon.” The billionaire-playboy-philanthropist façade Helen had seen on the TV melted away, leaving a broken, trembling man bereft of composure and self-assurance. Helen couldn’t x-ray Stark’s chest, but she could tell by the specific length and width of the contusions that the warped suit had bruised at least three ribs.

 

Tony nodded. “Take your time. This is fun for me,” he managed. Helen apologized again, then bandaged up the ribs as quickly as possible. After a deep breath, Tony said to Barton, “What if HYDRA figured out how to use the scepter to…” Tony pointed at Clint’s eyes. “To, you know, do the mind control thing to Bloom that Loki did to you?”

 

Clint pursed his lips and stared down at his dirty black boots. The bandages across his chest slipped a few inches, but he didn’t fix them.

 

Tony wrinkled his nose. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have mentioned it. Sorry.”

 

“It’s all right.”

 

“Barton, you know none of us blame you for—”

 

“I know.” Clint jutted his chin out. “I know.”

 

Helen leaned in closer to Tony’s hip when she saw the lacerations left behind by the Hulk. “Was there an angry cat in that bomb?” she wondered.

 

Clint flinched when Cho’s ministrations accidentally scraped a layer of skin off and Tony cried out in pain. The inventor blindly reached for the archer’s hand, who squeezed back just as hard. “Hang in there, Tony.”

 

A groan from Banner. Natasha stroked his hair. Steve’s transfusion finished up. He plucked the tubes out, pulled on a gray t-shirt, and scooted down the mattress to sit beside Maria. “Sure you’re ok?” Hill asked him after he downed a bottle of water and ate a slice of pizza.

 

“You know I heal fast,” Steve replied.

 

“And you know that’s not what I meant.” Maria tapped a manicured forefinger against the tablet. “Wilson checked in while you were gone. That tip about Barnes? It was a dead end.”

 

Instead of replying, Steve picked out another pizza slice.

 

“He’ll be here at dawn. Rhodes, too.”

 

“Sam will? Why?”

 

“You, Stark, and Barton are down. Thor and Banner are…” Maria glanced at the god, who’d rested his chin on his fist and shut his eyes. He yawned like a lion. “They’re spent. Rhodey and Sam are our pinch hitters.” Maria cleared her throat. She scratched the back of her neck, and then her collarbone. “Got a call from a reliable source while you guys were at the Triskelion. A SHIELD team needs extracted. Falcon, War Machine, Widow and I can handle it.”

 

“I’ll go with you.” Steve braced his bare feet against the floor. He started to stand up, but only managed to rise a few inches before he collapsed back down. “I’ll be ready to go with you at dawn,” he revised. Cap drank another bottle of water. “Personally, I’m not planning on taking any sick days.”

 

“I know you aren’t. None of you are. But, Captain Rogers, you’re not at your best. You have to stay behind. These loyal SHIELD soldiers need a topnotch team to get them home and, this time, probably ONLY this time, that shouldn’t include you. I bet everyone in this room would agree with me if we took a vote.”

 

Steve scowled. “I’ll just fly the Quinjet… Stay out of the battle.”

 

“Right. That’s like a fish volunteering not to swim,” Maria muttered. “Look, the mission is to a SHIELD fortress in the mountains of northern Guatemala. Half the staff is on our side, half is HYDRA. They’ve been at a stalemate since the Triskelion. It’s likely the winner will be whoever gets backup first.”

 

“Hostages?”

 

“Unclear. Probably.”

 

“Don’t suppose we could end it peacefully? Just open the doors, send a group in one direction and another in the opposite? Wouldn’t get any prisoners, but nobody would get hurt.”

 

Clint looked back over his shoulder from Stark’s bedside. “Neither side will leave,” he called, obviously eavesdropping, “without that tech.”

 

Thor started, burped loudly, groaned as he rose to his feet, and walked over to join Steve and Maria. “What valuable technology is protected in this fortress?”

 

“The Phase 2 weapons. Everything recovered from the base and transported by the Helicarrier after New York.” Hill leaned back on her hands and nodded at Steve and Stark. “Fury told me you got a firsthand look at the prototypes.”

 

“You are referring to the arsenal created using the Tesseract,” Thor realized.

 

“Yes. And the last thing we need right now is HYDRA aiming those weapons at us. Coulson…” Maria cleared her throat. “Coulson knocked Loki on his ass with one of them. They’re powerful.”

 

“Then they should be destroyed.” Steve glared at Hill. “We sent the Tesseract back to Asgard. When we find the scepter, it’s going back, too. Keeping any non-terrestrial tech long-term is just going to draw more attention to earth.”

 

“Correct,” Thor agreed. “Humans should not play with what they do not understand.”

 

Tony lifted his head. “That’s, like, my favorite thing to do.” Dr. Cho finished the last bandage. She filled a syringe with painkillers and injected Tony while he was distracted.

 

“Have to get them before we can destroy them,” said Hill.

 

Suddenly, Banner’s limbs twitched. “He’s waking up,” Natasha announced. She leaned back so that the whole group could see Bruce’s frowning face and fluttering eyelashes. Banner stretched out a hand and Natasha caught it in both of hers. “Shhh,” she soothed. “You’re home, Bruce. We’ve got you.”

 

“What happened? Did I—Tony?” Bruce’s glazed, wide eyes met Natasha’s. “Is Tony ok?”

 

Maria, Thor, and Clint shifted aside so that Banner had a clear view of Stark. “I’m here, buddy,” Tony called to him. “I’m here. I’m good.”

 

Banner rolled off the bed with the grace of a blind, drunk sailor. Steve found both his strength and his bearings and intercepted him before he could give Stark a bear hug. “Careful, he’s still hurt,” Steve warned gently. “Easy. Take it easy.”

 

Bruce settled for gripping Tony’s hand. “Wasn’t sure… I thought, maybe…” Bruce stuttered his way through two more thoughts before he paused, took a deep breath, ran his hands through his damp hair, and tried again. “I could’ve killed you. Ripping the suit apart like that could’ve killed you.”

 

Exhaustion, pain, the news medication, or a combination made it difficult for Tony to keep his eyes open. “Take a shower, Banner. You smell like the dumpster behind the Red Lobster,” he teased.

 

Bruce chuckled. Tears sprang to his eyes at the same time. Slowly, he leaned forward and very, very briefly, touched his forehead to Tony’s. Banner stood up straight again and he and Tony nodded at each other. Bruce sniffed. Then, he reached across Tony’s body and shook Helen’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Cho. I caught your presentation at a TED Talk in New Delhi a couple years back.”

 

“Pleasure’s all mine, Dr. Banner,” Helen replied with star-struck eyes. “You’re a, well, a legend.”

 

Bruce snorted. “Wish I wasn’t.”

 

Cho reached over and gently placed both of her petite hands across Banner’s tight fist. “A legendary scientist,” she clarified. “I reference your radiation experiments a dozen times a month. No one has contributed more to curing skin cancer than you.”

 

“Superhero,” Tony said sleepily.

 

Banner blushed. He scratched the back of his head and turned to Thor, eager to take the spotlight off himself. “Thanks for fishing me out. Did I see you decapitate a billboard?”

 

“A billboard that featured a golden retriever with three legs,” Thor mourned. “I shall see to it myself that the noble beast gets adopted.”

 

Clint rolled his eyes. “You’re a hero, man.” Thor grinned.

 

Natasha joined the circle. “Maybe you should sit down,” she encouraged Bruce. Then, after reexamining Clint, Steve, and Thor, said, “You all should.”

 

“That mission was a disaster. I was a lousy lookout!” Bruce suddenly said. He locked eyes with Natasha. “Could’ve gotten you all killed. I should’ve gotten into the fight sooner.” Bruce curled his lower lip into his mouth and bit down on it. “We need a—a signal,” he said. “Send up a flare or something when you need the Hulk to help. A number. A secret phrase. A codeword. Something.”

 

Steve sat back down on his mattress. “Code… smash?” he offered. “Code… fist?”

 

“Code Hulk?”

 

“Too on the nose, Romanoff,” Barton joked.

 

“Code ‘AHHH!’” said Thor. He grinned, pleased with himself.

 

“Code ‘oh, shit!’” Tony mumbled.

 

Clint spoke up. “Code, um… How about we just say ‘help’?”

 

Natasha wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Yeah, begging for help will intimidate the HYDRA agents trying to kill us.”

 

“We definitely need to be better prepared next time. That mission was just one dumb mistake after another.” Steve looked at each of his teammates in turn. “We have to get our jargon straight, our plans clear… There should be training. We should do daily calisthenics together every morning. Obstacle courses. Bonding exercises. Trust falls.” 

 

“Maybe braid each other’s hair?” Clint quipped. He reached for Thor’s but the god playfully slapped his hand away.

 

“I’m saying that when it’s crunch time, we can’t be arguing about which plan we’re going with. We need to use each other’s strengths and make up for one another’s weaknesses. We need standardized verbiage. We need structure, a chain of command.”

 

“A leader…?” mentioned Tony. “I’d nominate myself but not even I would vote for me.”

 

“Steve’s the leader,” Clint declared. “We all know it, we just haven’t said it out loud.”

 

“Captain Rogers truly is the obvious choice,” Thor agreed. “Unless we’re on Asgard. Or he’s dead.”

 

Clint tugged on his bandages. “Don’t think we’re going to be up for trust falls today, Cap,” said Barton with a sigh.

 

Maria stood. She rotated her neck and flexed her shoulders. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll escort Dr. Cho out and prepare a briefing for Falcon and War Machine.”

 

“I’ll get the jet ready,” Natasha said. She snatched up the last slice of pizza and jogged out of the room.

 

“I’ll get…” Barton hesitated. “Some shuteye.” He retreated to his bed and lay down with his back to the group.

 

Thor lifted Mjolnir and shuffled into the hall in the direction of the kitchen. “I require oatmeal.”

 

“I require a shower,” Bruce sighed. “Or maybe I shouldn’t bother? Are you sure you won’t need me on this mission, Agent Hill?”

 

“There’s always the possibility of a Code Green, Dr. Banner,” Hill said as she exited the room. “But, I insist that there won’t be one this time.”

 

“Are you sure I’M the boss?” Steve mumbled.

 

“Code Green?” Tony’s disappointment overshadowed Bruce’s. “Ah, man, they already gave you a codename. I didn’t get to choose my name, either. Hardly fair.” 

 

Dr. Cho packed up her medical bag and faced Steve, Bruce, and Maria. “I’m leaving you a supply of liniments. Change Mr. Stark’s bandages every four hours and call me if the pain gets worse. And he does NOT have his doctor’s permission to go into battle!”

 

“What?” Tony squeaked. He recovered quickly and smiled. “Of course, Doc. Whatever you say.” He winked at Steve.

 

Rogers’ cheeks reddened. “He will not be leaving that bed anytime soon, Doctor, I assure you.”

 

Helen chuckled at the sight of Tony Stark cowering beneath the captain’s glare.

 

**To Be Continued**

(If you review!)

 

 


	5. Their Top Secrets

The morning sun was just about to peek over the horizon when Natasha’s phone vibrated. She tossed the case of energy drinks in her arms into the minifridge, stepped over a hard-sided backpack stuffed with guns, collapsed into the Quinjet pilot’s seat, propped her freshly scrubbed boots up on the dashboard, and answered with a calm, concise, convincing, “He’s alive, honey.”

 

“Is he hurt?” asked a frantic female voice.

 

“He won’t be shooting arrows for few days,” Natasha reported, “but that’s the worst of it.”

 

“And you? How are the others?” Laura Barton asked.

 

“I got bonked on the nose. No biggie.” Nat sighed and leaned back against the headrest. “The guys are…They’ll be ok in a few days. A few weeks for Tony…” Natasha shook her head as if Laura could see her as well as hear. “Stark saved us. He saved us all. I hate to admit it—and probably wouldn’t to anybody but you—but there’s a slight possibility that my first, second, and third impressions of Tony Stark were… Incorrect.”

 

Laura feigned a gasp. “You mean the Black Widow made a booboo?” she asked with playful sarcasm. “You’re not perfect, Nat.”

 

“Doesn’t stop me from trying to be.”

 

“I know. It’s reason number 206 why I love you.” Laura sniffed. “And I don’t say this enough: thanks for watching Clint’s ass. I’m quite fond of his ass.”

 

“His ass is a pain in my ass,” Natasha chuckled.

 

Laura didn’t disagree. “I have to tell you something. Clint’s going to kill me for telling you before him, but I have to. I have to tell somebody.”

 

Nat sat up straight. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing! I’m—Nat, I’m pregnant!”

 

Natasha Romanoff wasn’t the type of woman who squeals and jumps up and down when she hears such news. She was, however, the type of woman who places bets. “I knew it! Barton owes me fifty bucks.”

 

“How, wait, what? How did you know before I did?”

 

“Honey, you were up two cup sizes the last time I saw you. And, before you ask, yes, I noticed, and that’s because I’m trained to notice everything. So is Clint, but he was too distracted to, um, put two and two together.” 

 

“Do you two often have conversations about my breasts?” Natasha could hear Laura’s smile over the phone. “We already have a name picked out. I want to tell you that, too. It’s Natasha, Natasha. We decided years ago that if we had another kid, we’d name her after you.”

 

Nat couldn’t remember the last time she’d literally been at a loss for words. Likely, that had never happened in her entire life. But she was mute, now. Mute and touched. Some unnamable part of her heart warmed up as if from a hug. “I’m—I’m honored, Laura, truly. Wow, I… Wow.”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t have my first child let alone a third if you weren’t his partner. I could thank you for protecting him every day for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t feel like enough. I hope, Nat, that you’ll take this as the ultimate expression of our gratitude.”

 

Natasha bit down on her bottom lip. “Yeah,” she said, her throat constricted with feelings she couldn’t quite define. “Yeah, uh, if you do that AND he pays me my $50, then we’re good. Really good. I really am flattered, L—”

 

Movement in the front window. Not beyond it, but reflected in the glass. “Text you in 15.” Natasha pocketed her cell and rotated around in the chair. “Should you be out of bed?”

 

A pale, pajama clad Steve Rogers collapsed into the closest seat. “You guys don’t seem to get the concept of super-healing,” he sighed. “I heal. Super-fast.”

 

“Smart ass,” Nat teased.

 

“Smart _mouth_ ,” he corrected. Steve crossed his hands in his lap. “Barton says I can order this JARVIS voice computer thing to make an omelet. Is that true, or is he just pulling my leg?”

       

Both corners of Natasha’s red lips twitched. “Of course. JARVIS do your laundry and give you a massage, too. Didn’t you see the robotic arms in the kitchen drawers when Stark gave you a tour of the tower?”

 

“He gave you a tour? I didn’t get a tour.” Steve cocked his head to the side. “And I saw that flinch, Agent Romanoff. Hope you have a better Poker face in the field.”

 

“Busted. JARVIS won’t make food, but he can order it for you. Tony has two dozen takeout menus on the eighth-floor fridge.” Natasha squinted when she realized that Steve was trying too hard to avoid her eyes. “What’s up?”

 

Steve took a granola bar out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “Cranberry raisin, right?”

 

“Super-healing, super-strength, super-memory.” Nat ripped open the package and took a big bite. “Steve, what is it?”

 

Cap cocked his eyebrows. “Just wanted to catch you before you left on this mission to Guatemala… Wish you good luck… Remind you to contact us if you get into trouble…”

 

Nat narrowed her eyes. “Steve, tell me what’s wrong right now.” Cap scratched his ear and stared at his bare feet. “You look like you’re either about to ask me on a date or tell me you have cancer. Which is it?”

 

Steve chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about what Arnim Zola showed us.”

 

“The creepy computer face scientist who tried to kill us? That Nazi footage turned my stomach, too.” Nat picked at a broken fingernail. “HYDRA growing inside SHIELD for 70 years… I can read _your_ face like a book, Steve. How could I have missed this?”

 

Steve opened his mouth to speak comforting words. But, then, he remembered who he was talking to, and left the question in the air for her to answer for herself.

 

Rogers leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Zola said that when history didn’t cooperate, it was changed. And then he showed images of Buck—of the Winter Soldier.”

 

Nat lowered her eyes. “I remember. And when I said that SHIELD would’ve stopped HYDRA, he said there were—”

 

“Accidents. ‘Accidents’ like assassinating Fury—trying to. ‘Accidents’ like…” Shallow water briefly filled Steve’s eyes. He blinked it away before it could become tears. “Zola all but told us that the Winter Soldier killed Howard. Howard and Maria Stark were murdered.”

 

Natasha sniffed. “If you want me to tell you that I interpreted those images differently, Steve, I did not.”

 

Steve nodded. “What do we do?” he whispered. “Do we tell Tony?”

 

“I’ve memorized his file, but you know him better.”

 

“You’ve known him longer,” Steve countered.  

 

“There’s been a connection between you two since you met,” said Nat.

 

“Because of Howard,” Steve reasoned. Nat didn’t confirm or deny his theory. “I hate having this secret.” Steve pointed at the Quinjet’s ceiling. “It’s like a dark cloud over my head. I think about it whenever Tony and I are in the same room.”

 

The Black Widow offered him a patient smile. “Keeping secrets is second nature to me, Steve. It’s automatic. Like breathing.” Nat thought of Laura and baby Natasha, and smiled. “When I keep a secret, I do it for one of two reasons: because it’s not my secret to tell, or because revealing it would cause someone I care about a lot of pain.”

 

A slight grin from Cap. “Are you saying you genuinely care about Tony Stark?”

 

“You don’t?”

 

Cap sighed hard and heavy through his nostrils. “You’ve already decided not to tell him.”

 

“That doesn’t mean you have to. I think keeping secrets protects people.” Nat studied her friend’s face. “You’re the type who thinks revealing secrets set people _free_. So, tell me… How did you feel when you found out the secret that Barnes was still alive?”

 

Steve snorted sharply. “Not _free_ ,” he hissed. “But I’d still rather know than not. I think it’s better to know, but… But is it? Is it, really? I need to think about—”

 

Both nearly pulled out guns at the sound of quickly approaching footsteps. Maria Hill entered the Quinjet with Falcon and War Machine. “Ready to go?”

 

Steve reached into his pocket, pulled out another granola bar, and tossed it to Sam. “Banana walnut, right?”

 

Wilson hesitated, then said, “Close, Cap. Banana peanut.”

 

Natasha reached over and patted Steve’s knee. “Super-imperfect,” she teased.

 

Hill handed Rogers a tablet as he left the ship. “Two more distress signals: Barcelona and Seattle. SHIELD facilities all over the world are being attacked by newly unveiled HYDRA agents. It’s all collapsing.”

 

Steve rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “We knew it would,” he whispered. “SHIELD’s broken, and it might have to crack some more before we can separate the bad guys from the good. We knew this would happen.”

 

Colonel James Rhodes gestured for Steve to swipe his finger across the tablet to the next screen. “Did you know three city blocks of Barcelona would break with it?”

 

Steve stared at a video of terrified civilians fleeing a gargantuan explosion while police officers and firemen carried children into ambulances. Sirens wailed. Debris rained down. A woman wearing a SHIELD uniform lay motionless on the hood of a smoking car.

 

Steve left the jet without another word.

 

\---------

 

**_ TWO WEEKS LATER _ **

 

“JARVIS, lights, dim,” Banner whispered when he entered the windowless infirmary. Ivory light gradually rose from slim panels jutting from the baseboards. Bruce glanced at his watch, confirmed that it was time to change Tony’s bandages, and quietly started sorting through Dr. Cho’s latest shipment of medications.

 

“ _No_ …”

 

Bruce tiptoed over to the only occupied bed in the room. Tony lay asleep on his left side with his cheek cushioned against a pillow and braced by his left arm. Sweat had soaked all the way through his bandages, and covered his face like a liquid mask. Clawed hands gripped the pillows and sheets as if holding on for dear life. He exhaled a string of vowels and consonants that made zero sense to his teammate. Then, he swallowed twice, twitched, clenched his eyes shut tighter, and repeated anxious, incomprehensible words.

 

“Not again,” Bruce moaned. He reached for Tony’s arm, but avoided actually touching it. “Tony, wake up,” he called.

 

Stark scratched his chest, fingered the bandages around his neck, and then yanked off the ones encircling his collarbone. “ _Can’t breathe_ ,” he gasped. “ _Can’t—No, Cap_!” The whisper of a voice crescendoed into a yelp. “ ** _Steve_**!” He squirmed, and rolled.

 

Tony would’ve fallen off the bed then and there if Bruce hadn’t stopped him. The doctor leaned onto the mattress, braced his hip against Tony’s torso, and gripped both the back of his neck and the back of his head. “Tony, you’re having a nightmare. Open your eyes. _Tony_!”

 

Stark woke up gasping a moment later. Twitching fingers desperately reached for anything solid, and they found Banner’s wrist. At the concerned look on Bruce’s face, Tony shuddered and groaned, “Ah shit, not again.” And then he rolled onto his side, his back to Bruce, but his hand still clamped around his friend’s wrist.

 

Tony’s shoulders trembled like he was covered in snow instead of burns. Bruce allowed his friend to continue clutching his wrist, and sat on the bed beside him. “Same dream?” he asked with his best bedside manner voice. “You in the wormhole, Pepper in the fire?” Tony confirmed Bruce’s theory by squeezing his hand. “Rhodes told me you haven’t had one of those nightmares in a couple months.”

 

“I’m always breaking things, always falling…” Tony cleared his throat. “I’m falling, Pepper’s falling… This time I was trapped in the warped suit, and I saw Steve falling from the Helicarrier. Did I tell you I turned on the news just in time to witness that? Honest to God, I tried to reach through the TV to catch him. Jammed my fingers against the screen.”

 

Bruce chortled mutely. Then, he exhaled, and said, “Tony, we need to tell the team about this. What if you have a panic attack in the field—during a fight?”

 

“I won’t.” Stark spoke the words automatically. “I won’t let it happen.”

 

“But what if—”

 

Tony dropped Bruce’s hand. He rolled another few inches away. “I can take care of this myself.”

 

“That’s ‘you’ talk, not ‘team’ talk.” Banner moved to the other side of the bed and leaned in close so that Tony couldn’t avoid eye contact. “What if this cripples you mid-battle and someone else gets hurt? A civilian, maybe one of us? Dammit, Tony, this is what Steve was talking about in the hospital. Being part of a team means you must take care of yourself not just for your own sake, but for ours. No more going rogue. You can’t be a lone wolf anymore, not even when it comes to this. We know each other’s strengths, but we also have to know each other’s weaknesses.”

 

Tony glared at him. “No more bandages. No more medication. I’m getting back in the game today,” he whispered. “And I’m _not_ weak.”

 

“No, you’re not. But you also aren’t invincible. The world needs you, Tony. Flaws and all.”

 

Tony rolled his eyes. “You get that this vulnerability thing is a new concept for me, right?”

 

“You can do it with me.”

 

“Yeah, but can you see Thor wearing a sweater, sipping tea, and shedding a tear when I tell him about how my daddy didn’t love me?” Stark shooed Banner aside. He shifted to the edge of the bed and placed his bare feet on the cold tile floor. “Speaking of which…?”

 

“The team’s home. Got back an hour ago. Debriefing at 2. I mean, 1400. Geeze, I’ll never get used to military time.”

 

“The SHIELD base in Mexico City…?” Tony prompted.

 

“Lost. And no scepter. No tech. No survivors. On the bright side, no Enhanced individuals this time. At least one HYDRA cell wasn’t doing horrendous human experiments.”

 

Tony rolled his eyes. “Hooray.” He started ripping the remaining bandages off his body. “I’ll be at the meeting. And warn Rogers that I am _not_ in the mood for him to mother me.”

 

“Tony…”

 

“I need to watch the same video footage and lame-ass slideshow presentations as the rest of the team. And, doctor’s permission or not, I’m putting on the suit.”

 

“What about Pepper’s permission?”

 

“Don’t rat on me!” Stark stuck a finger in Bruce’s face, then deflated. “I hate you… a little.”

 

Bruce gave him a rare unfiltered smile. “You _adore_ me… a little.”

 

Tony started to follow Banner out the infirmary door, but Bruce suddenly pivoted to face him. “Promise not to kill the messenger?”

 

Tony blinked. “No.”

 

“Fair enough.” Banner stood up straight and tipped up his chin. “Rhodes made me swear to keep some secrets from you because… Because you’re still healing, and because you refuse to go on medication for PTSD, and because you have enough on your shoulders already—”

 

Tony spoke his friend’s name like it was a question. “Bruce.”

 

“I don’t care if people keep secrets from me, but I can’t stand keeping secrets from them. I always feel like it’ll pop out anyway, at the worst possible time, no matter how hard I try to—”

 

“Bruce!” Fresh red color filled Tony’s face. It had nothing to do with the nearly-healed burns.

 

Banner swallowed. “HYDRA infiltrated and destroyed a Stark Industries warehouse in Miami. They hacked into your servers and—I’m sorry, Tony—several of your staff were killed. And they got away with some weapons, but we’re not sure what. Natasha is coordinating a few loyal techs to upgrade your security and check for, you know, viruses and identity theft and…” Bruce’s words trailed off, and he fixed his gaze on his own shoelaces. “And we think they got their hands on the blueprints for this building…”

 

Stark’s left eye twitched. Bruce braced for a reprimand, but didn’t get the one he expected. “You want to know how I know when you’re holding something back?” Tony whispered. “You grind your front teeth together. It’s annoying. Punch-you-in-the-face annoying.”

 

Bruce’s shoulders slumped. He softened his tone of voice as if the volume would set off a bomb. “HYDRA’s been threatening people. Politicians, scientists, the United Nations, various governments and militaries and, well, anybody even remotely connected to us. Peggy Carter received some threatening letters. That kid Steve rescued from the Triskelion got some emails. Dr. Cho’s lab was raided.” Bruce took a deep breath before continuing. “Wilson is going to be Erik Selvig and Jane Foster’s bodyguard whenever Thor is unavailable. And we heard from Fury for the first time since he went off the grid. He had a close call with a HYDRA assassin in New Orleans.”

 

Tony chomped on his bottom lip and raised his eyes to the ceiling as if in prayer. “Spit it out, Bruce. Spit it the hell out right now or I will punch you in the face, Hulk or not.”

 

Banner gave himself an extra three seconds to summon his courage. “She’s ok,” he whispered. “Pepper’s ok. Hogan spotted the sniper and shoved her aside in time. Nobody got shot. Nobody got hurt. The assassin’s in police custody.”

 

The air in the hallway seemed to thicken. If Tony Stark was a cartoon character, smoke would burst from his ears.

 

“Maria Hill flew out this morning to meet up with them,” Bruce continued. “Both she and Rhodey are going to stay by Pepper’s side 24/7 for the time being. They’ll keep her safe, Tony. You know they will.”

 

Stark cleared his throat. His mouth barely moved when he said, deadpan, “ _JARVIS_.”

 

“ _Sir_?” the AI replied over the Tower’s speakers.

 

“Rhodey. Call him. **_Now_**.”

 

Bruce noticed the tremble in the inventor’s fists. “Dammit, I shouldn’t have told you…”

 

“Always tell me,” Tony hissed back, his eyes wide and wild. “You guys don’t want me to be a lone wolf, right? Then _don’t give me a reason to be_. If we can’t trust each other, we can’t be a team.”

 

“Did you just directly quote Captain America?” Bruce asked with a short, breathy laugh. Tony was _not_ amused. JARVIS reached Rhodes, and beeped for Tony to speak. “You’re going to be late for the debriefing, aren’t you?”

 

“Tell Rogers to cover his virgin ears.” Tony stepped back into the infirmary. “The Tower isn’t soundproof, and I’m about to use some very, _very_ strong language.”   

 

**To Be Continued**


	6. The Resurrected Army

**PRESENT**

 

Kentucky. 3AM. Thick dark clouds muffled the moon’s light as a soft but steady rain began. “Five,” Tony Stark said over the coms. “Five heat signatures.” And then he said, for Thor’s sake, “That means there are five people in there.”

 

Barton started to climb. He was only halfway up the tallest tree in the woods when Tony’s patience disintegrated and he started humming the ‘Jeopardy’ song. Barton rolled his eyes, arched up on his tiptoes, and wrapped his gloved hands around the next branch. “Anytime now, Barton,” came Tony’s voice in Clint’s ear. “Rogers isn’t getting any younger.”

 

“You know, you could’ve flown me up here,” Clint grunted.

 

“Cap said not to be conspicuous and I, apparently, am exceptionally conspicuous. Besides, I offered to build you a custom jetpack but, no, a jetpack isn’t practical for the world’s best archer.”  

 

Clint used the next branch like a gymnast would use a bar and flipped upwards, knocking an empty robin’s nest out of the tree. “If you make me a jetpack, the next thing you’ll want to do is build me my own Iron Man armor.”

 

“Why do you say that like it wouldn’t be the coolest thing in the world?”

 

“Stealth, Stark. That’s all the armor I need.”

 

Steve cleared his throat. “Team, maybe now would be a good time to go over the plan again.” Five voices groaned. “Your turn, Thor.”

 

“In our Quinjet we sailed to the great land of Kentucky!” Thor announced. Barton thought for a moment that Thor was being dramatically sarcastic, but after he listened to another sentence, Clint concluded that the God of Thunder was completely serious. “The plan is as follows,” Thor said. “Agent Clint Barton, wearing a black leather uniform, cleated black climbing boots, and armed with a mighty bow and three dozen of the fiercest arrows, will ascend to the highest vantage point within one hundred yards of the great cavern of rock where our enemies cower.”

 

“Wow, uh, that’s specific.” Clint squinted through the raindrops and estimated that he had another thirty feet to go.

 

“The Hawkeye will unleash a mighty arrow into the northwest entrance to the cave. A plume of toxic gas will sweep through the underground tunnels and pockets and the cowardly agents of HYDRA will be forced to go through the only remaining exit. At that time, the mighty Avengers Thor, Steve Rogers, and Iron Man will demand their immediate and unconditional surrender. Our enemies will weep for their mothers, but we will have no mercy! We will deliver them to local law enforcement officers and they will spend their remaining sundowns begging a deaf government for forgiveness!”

 

“Uh,” Steve grunted. “Thor, you can be less specific,” he advised. More than one Avenger snort-giggled.

 

“Oh, no. No, no,” Tony interrupted. “Let’s vote. Sound off if you want Thor to give us more details—ten times the details!”

 

“100% in favor of that,” said Natasha.

 

“Excuse me while I Hulk out to avoid this conversation.” Banner wasn’t kidding. Clint heard the great green giant’s annoyed snorts a moment later.

 

“What color socks is Natasha wearing?” Stark prompted. “Should I be facing north or south?”

 

“Geeze,” an exasperated Steve sighed.

 

Barton nodded at a wide-eyed squirrel who stared, motionless, at the wingless mammal invading its home. “What will happen next, Thor?” he asked. “What’s the rest of the plan?”

 

“We shall feast on wine and—and those wings of chickens the Black Widow so desires. And then—”

 

“Barton, are you in position yet?” interrupted Steve.

 

Clint couldn’t contain a chuckle. “I’ve been ready for five minutes.” The archer straddled a thick branch, loaded his arrow, pulled back on the bow, waited for moonlight, and then aimed at a man-sized arch of rocks.

 

“No, no, one more time, one more time,” said Tony. “But short this time, Thor. Tell us the plan in as few words as possible!”

 

Thor cleared his throat. “We shall—what is the phrase? Kick? Yes, we shall kick various asses!”

 

Tony howled with laughter. Clint grinned extra-wide when he recognized Steve’s brief chuckle. “We’re ready, Barton,” Cap said. “Let’s flush these rats out.”

 

Clint took a deep breath. During that three-second inhale he measured the wind and sensed the weight of the raindrops.

 

He unleashed the arrow at the peak of his breath. Golden smoke erupted from the cave with a pop that sent owls and bats scattering in every direction. Below, on the opposite side of the cavern, past the thickest swath of the tree line and near the steep lip of a crater divided by a sluggish river, the other Avengers waited to pounce—lions on antelopes.

 

\----------

 

**FIVE HOURS AGO**

 

“Shit,” Stark hissed. Flickering blue and white lights alighted his frowning face. “You crashed the Project Insight Helicarriers, Cap, but HYDRA’s primary satellite is still very, very much in play. We’re getting a live feed.”

 

Barton switched on the automatic pilot and joined his teammates’ huddle in the rear of the Quinjet. Tony splashed his fingers across a tablet and a holographic, spherical rendering of Earth rose to the ceiling. “Neat,” said Clint. “Fancy. And we’re looking at… What?”

 

A beep chimed, and red dot appeared over North America. Rogers set his shield aside and joined the circle. “Is that Washington D.C.?”

 

Tony zoomed in on the dot. “Uh huh.”

 

“The Pentagon,” said Banner.

 

Another zoom. “Room 338 of the Pentagon,” Natasha read out loud.

 

Thor shouldered Mjolnir and frowned at the floating globe. “I do not understand. What does that red light indicate?”

 

A second light appeared, this time in Vienna. Tony pointed at it and said, “Each dot represents a system that’s receiving the encrypted data from HYDRA’s satellite.”

 

Thor cocked blond eyebrows. “Satellite? Your moon?”

 

“Big computer floating in space,” Banner explained. Thor pivoted and looked out the jet’s window as if he expected to see a laptop hovering in the clouds. “It’s how HYDRA’s been tracking us, Pepper, Doctor Foster… Everyone. Literally anyone, _everyone_ on the planet.”

 

“Oh, god,” Natasha whispered.

 

A third dot. New Zealand.

 

“So, we can safely assume that whoever’s receiving this information is HYDRA?” Steve guessed. “These might even be their primary bases.”

 

Dot number four. Argentina.

 

“How many bases?” Barton wondered.

 

“This is great,” Natasha decided. “Once we have a list we can start crossing places off one by one. Loki’s scepter is bound to be in one of them.”

 

Number five: New York City. Number seven quickly followed number six. Three additional dots appeared at the same time. “Ten locations. That’s not as many I expected. That’s doable.” Bruce scowled when five more beeps preceded five more lights. “We, uh, might have to work overtime, but that’s still not—”

 

_Beep_. Steve’s jaw dropped. “That’s the Vatican.”

 

_Beep_. “That’s the CDC,” said Tony.

 

_Beep_.

 

_Beep beep beep_!

 

“Son of a gun,” Cap muttered.

 

_Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep_!

 

The ‘beeps’ kept sounding off like bullets from a machine gun. “Forty,” Tony reported when the others lost count. “96… 183… 209…”

 

“They’re everywhere,” Clint gasped when McMurdo airport in Antarctica turned red. “Are they on the moon? I bet they’re on the moon.”

 

“Are they observing us as we speak?” Thor asked.

 

Fine hairs on the back of Steve’s neck stood at attention. “Tony, shut it off.”

 

Stark didn’t even blink. “There’s more data coming in. It’ll finish in 30 seconds. God, Steve, there must be 300 sites.”

 

“Stark, you just said that this satellite is tracking us. Blow it the hell up!” Natasha warned.

 

Banner appealed to the scientist in his friend. “Tony, if you’re downloading from them, they could be uploading from you.”

 

“But what if…” Tony bit down on his bottom lip. “Zola’s Algorithm detected threats to HYDRA’s master plan. What if we could reverse it and detect threats to us? Predictive analytics would be a game changer. Catch the bad guys before they even _think_ about coming after us.”

 

Bruce and Steve exchanged panicky looks. “Tony,” began Rogers, “you of all people should know that a man can be one person one day, and a different man the next. We can’t arrest people who haven’t done anything wrong… Yet.”

 

“ _Yet_!” Tony clarified. “What if it could predict a 50% chance of—”

 

“Tony!” Steve snarled.

 

**_Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep_ ** **!**

 

Thor raised his hands and backed away. He was unsure if it was a time bomb, but enough days around the humans of Earth had taught him to be cautious. They were doomed to blow each other up eventually. “Heed the captain, Stark,” the Asgardian ordered. Mjolnir twirled between his fingers.

 

“We’re directly under the satellite, right?” Steve asked Banner, who nodded. The super-soldier pivoted and yanked down the lever that opened the ramp. Freezing wind blasted into the ship. Steve pointed up at space and ordered, “Thor, destroy it.” 

 

“No, wait!” Stark cried. “This is our only chance to get the Algorithm. It would take me 30 years to recreate what HYDRA invented!”

 

Bruce took Steve’s side. “Tony, he’s right! We can’t risk it falling into the wrong hands. It’s better to get rid of it for good!”

 

“But, but…!” Tony cursed, but no one heard him over the wind. “Cap, hear me out. With this technology, we could instantly find HYDRA agents, keep government officials safe, find prisoners of war, track down a kidnapped friend… Steve, what if this is the only way to find Barnes?”

 

Steve flinched. He hated Tony in that moment, but also respected his friend enough to give the idea another twenty seconds of consideration. But, finally, he said, “No. We have the locations of hundreds of HYDRA bases. That’s enough.”

 

“Really not a democracy, are we?” Tony sighed. He stepped aside with a flourish of his arms. “Light it up, Goldilocks.”

 

Thor marched to the end of the ramp. He raised Mjolnir, summoned lightning out of both everything and nothing, and thrust his hammer straight up.

 

Minutes later a warped mass of metal the size of a school bus hurled down past the jet. The rest of the satellite’s ashes disintegrated in the atmosphere. “Gonna build my own satellite,” Tony muttered. “Bigger. Better. JARVIS-ed. Watch our asses, at least.”

 

Steve put on his blue gloves, knotted his arms against his stomach, and turned back to the map. “If we have time, let’s avoid high profile targets until we’re a flawless team,” he said.

 

Natasha cocked her head to the side and gestured at the parade of red lights. “Where do you suggest we start?”

 

Tony stepped up and wiped the palm of his hand across the hologram. The sphere turned tight and furious like a top. When it slowed down, Stark shut his eyes and held out his forefinger. He counted to three, thrust his finger forward, and the globe froze.

 

Barton reached over the inventor’s shoulder, nudged his finger aside, and scowled. “Kentucky? Can’t we start somewhere with a beach?”

 

\----------

 

**PRESENT**

 

Natasha flushed with rage at the sight of the first two men to emerge, gagging on golden gas, from HYDRA’s secret cave. “They’re mine.” The Black Widow splashed her way through a deep puddle and grabbed both agents by the back of the necks. She cuffed their wrists behind their backs only after she slammed their heads against a tree.

 

“Who are they?” Steve asked.

 

“Delancey and Jackson. Worked under Coulson in New Mexico. Security.”

 

“Misogynists,” Clint reminded her from up in the tree. “Is Jackson’s wallet on him? He owes me twenty bucks from a Poker game.”

 

Cap shrugged. “Two down.”

 

The third target, a red-faced woman with equally red hair, came out fighting. A bullet ricocheted off Steve’s shield. Another rebounded off Thor’s hammer. Iron Man stepped closer and aimed his repulsors beneath her boots. She was unconscious before she landed on the rocks. Four and five, a man and a woman wearing immaculate knee-length lab coats, collapsed to their knees when Hulk roared at them. Cap pulled off his blue cowl. “Stay down,” he ordered.

 

“Please,” the chubby, balding man gasped between coughs. “You don’t—you don’t know what you’ve done!”

 

“We’re not HYDRA,” the woman claimed. A braid of blonde hair reached her skinny, trembling elbows. “They took us months ago—kidnapped us right after the attack on New York—made us… Made us do things.”  

 

Barton slid down the tree, raced around the cave, and joined the team. “I don’t recognize them,” he said. Natasha nodded in agreement. “What did they make you do?” she asked.

 

The pair shared a terrified look. Both of their eyes were bloodshot from the gas, but the coughs had subsided. “We’re neuroscientists,” the woman explained. “They threatened us—threatened our families!”

 

“They were part of the SHIELD squad assigned to collect all of the Chitauri bodies.” The man started to get up, but Cap held his hand out in a silent order to stay put. “Please, you don’t understand, they’re right behind us! A whole army! The gas woke them up! It _woke all of them up_!”

 

“Woke them…” Thor’s eyes dashed from Steve to Tony to Natasha to Clint. “Woke up the Chitauri? _The Chitauri are alive_?”

 

“How?” Tony demanded. “How the hell did you bring them back to life?”

 

“We didn’t!” the woman squealed. “We just reanimated them. They’re barely sentient—can’t even aim a weapon. Mindless soldiers. Nothing more than zombies.”

 

“Alien zombies.” Clint snorted a sharp breath through his nostrils. “I think I’ve seen this movie.”

 

“One of those made-for-TV sci-fi movies where everybody dies?” Natasha wondered.

 

“Yep.”

 

Cap got right down to business. “What does this mean? Can they walk, talk, fight, what?”

 

Rolling rocks in the cave. Debris of stones and vines and dust crumbled off the walls. Rainwater disintegrated the remaining plumes of gas.

 

“We barely understand them. They’re like humanoid crocodiles, minus the snout. Savage. Vicious.” The male scientist collapsed forward on his hands—a penitent man begging for forgiveness. “And the link—the neutral link that connected the Chitauri to each other, to the mothership? To animate them we had to do it one brain at a time, which means the link is permanently severed.” He looked up at Tony. “You can’t—it won’t—you can’t just destroy a central circuit and they all drop. They’re autonomous and…” The man looked at his partner for the right word.

 

The blonde sniffed. Raindrops plastered her face. “Feral,” she whispered.

 

Hulk sniffed the air. A low, deep growl vibrated in his chest.

 

“We resurrected their bodies and… Their rage.”

 

Thunder approached. The rain transformed from a steady fall to a pounding attack. All around the Avengers, small animals and birds abandoned their warm shelters and scattered in every direction away from the cave. A curious hare hesitated outside the cavern’s opening, took one sniff, and then bolted away at a wild run.

 

Steve carefully put his cowl back on. “Romanoff, take their handcuffs off.”

 

Natasha faltered. “Steve?”

 

“The closest town is less than two miles south. Wake the prisoners up, point them in that direction, and tell them to run.”

 

Barton shook his head. “Cap—”

 

“Help her.” Steve crouched onto one knee and looked into the scientists’ eyes. “How many?” he whispered. “How many are there?”

 

Raindrops on the man’s face… Tears in his eyes… “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so very sorry but… After we got one on its feet, the HYDRA scientists cloned it. They picked up 314 dead bodies,” he replied, “but the number of restored aliens coming out of that cave? _862_.”

 

“God,” Tony gasped. He slammed his armored visor shut. “Steve… Steve, that’s too many. All they’ll have to do is—is walk forward!”

 

“Don’t suppose you have reinforcements on fast call?” Steve asked.

 

Tony chuckled—a hollow sound stifled by the rain. “It’s called _speed dial_ , Grandpa. And even that phrase is out of date!” Tony raised his face and looked up into the trees on his left. At the same time, he reached for Steve with his right hand, and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. Cap patted Tony’s hand once before he withdrew it.

 

Cap then returned his attention to the scientists. “There are two thousand people in that town that you have to warn. Run,” he ordered, “and don’t look back.” They nodded. Water flicked off the woman’s braid as they ran rabbit-fast into the woods. Captain America stood back up. He used his boot to draw a horizontal line in the dirt at their feet. “This is the line,” he told his team. “The Chitauri will not cross it. No matter what.”

 

The Hulk huffed air in agreement. “No matter what,” Tony said.

 

Shadows in the cave. Hulk, Thor, Steve, and Tony closed ranks. Clint and Natasha returned with their weapons ready.

 

“New plan?” Thor asked the captain. “Those trust falls we did yesterday failed to prepare us for this.”

 

Black shapes marched forward. Reptilian tongues tasted the air for prey.

 

“Plan B, Cap?” Tony nudged Steve’s elbow with his own.

 

Bolts of lightning illuminated hundreds gold armor. The army emerged.

 

Steve sighed. “Plan B is…” He glanced at Thor, and then rested his eyes on Tony. “Don’t die.”

 

Lidless eyes zeroed in on the team and hundreds of fanged mouths _shrieked_.

 

**To Be Continued**


	7. The Soldier's Minute

Wind kicked in. Raindrops fell at an angle instead of straight down. The gale pushed the water directly into the Avengers’ eyes while dark clouds blocked out the entire full moon. Nothing illuminated the clearing except for the golden glow of the Iron Man armor. Tony diverted power to the light until everyone could see without squinting.  

 

Tall and crescent-shaped, the mouth of the cave was too wide for even the Hulk to cork it like a bottle, but the great beast dug in like a goalie and tried anyway. The corpse-gray Chitauri that managed to limp past his forearm-thick fingers slumped on emaciated limbs under the torrential rain. Each listed slightly to the side in scratched armor that appeared too large on their slim bodies. Their eyes, formerly a neon yellow-green, were velvet black and unblinking.

 

Natasha figured it out first. “They’re blind!” she shouted at the team.

 

At the sound of her voice, the zombie-Chitauri promptly pivoted and stumbled towards her. On the opposite side of the line, Thor yelled, “Perhaps they are drawn to sound!” The Chitauri proved the god right when they all adjusted their direction again.

 

Something leaked from the aliens’ noses and the corners of their eyes—something sticky, something black, something that stung nostrils and smelled like sulfur. JARVIS scanned the discharge and reported to Tony, who relayed the findings to the rest of the group. “Not sure what that goo is,” the inventor said, “but it’s highly flammable. Any lightning strike, repulsor blast, or explosive arrow could start a chain reaction that will blow up the cave.”

 

“So we can only fight hand-to-hand?” Cap clarified.

 

Tony sighed over the coms. “Berettas are probably ok as long as they’re not caked in the stuff. But if one spark hits that ick, we’ll all be blown to Asgard.” Barton and Romanoff started passing out daggers and handguns.

 

“Use your blades first, guys,” Steve reminded them. “Bullets run out.”

 

Light bounced off the Chitauri’s limbs when they pivoted towards Cap, and the team saw how crudely the lifeless aliens had been weaponized. When HYDRA failed to resurrect an army capable of shooting a weapon or engaging in close quarters combat, they armed their clones the best way they could. The best way, apparently, was to duct tape knives, machetes, and spiked brass knuckles to their hands—Edward Scissorhands style.

 

Mud puddles formed at their boots. The stream turned into a river and started to fill the crater with water. Above the scene, lightning scattered horizontally from one cloud to the next before stabbing the ground north of them. Thunder followed without a single second’s hesitation.

 

“Dammit,” Steve hissed at the sight. “Thor, keep an eye on the weather. We need you to be a lightning rod.”

 

“Copy that.” Thor grinned at himself for using the correct jargon. Clint gave him an approving thumb’s up.

 

Steve’s brain scrambled for ideas. “Hulk, if you can, only let a half dozen out at a time. If we can take them out in small, manageable batches, together, that’ll keep us from getting separated and overwhelmed.”

 

Hulk huffed a short, wet snort—his version of “copy that.”

 

Steve pointed at the roof of the cave. “Get up there,” he told Barton. “We’ll need a sniper if any of them breach the line. Don’t let them out of your sight.”

 

Iron Man stepped forward to transport the archer. “You’ve got a plan now, don’t you?” Tony asked Steve when he landed back beside him.

 

Steve looked at Thor. “Ever heard of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War?”

 

Stark raised his hand like a schoolchild. “I have.”

 

“Right, but have you heard of the 20th Maine?”

 

“I have.” Barton settled into position on the cave’s roof. He loaded an arrow, and skewered the closest Chitauri that was stumbling, blind but not deaf, out from under Hulk’s armpit. “Union Infantry regiment led by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.”

 

Steve nodded. “And do you know what the 20th Maine did on Little Round Top?”

 

“Shot Confederates?” Tony offered.

 

“They held the North’s flank with a bayonet charge,” said Natasha. “Most of their bullets were spent, the Southern soldiers were climbing up the hill towards them, so they started running down it.” She shrugged when the four men looked at her with surprise. “What? I’m a Russian assassin. I’ve studied every battle in history.”

 

“They didn’t just run downhill,” Cap clarified, “they ran down and to the right—swung like a door on a hinge. They flanked the Confederates and cornered them against the rest of the Union line. And that, team, is what we’re going to do today.” Rogers pointed at the cliff on their left. “That crater below us is left over from the mining era. It’s a perfect bowl-shape, 50-feet-down. The Chitauri we don’t kill? We’ll shepherd them into that hole—swing forward as a group and push them back. Water in there is rising fast. Might drown a few. Might stampede a few. At the very least it will keep the rogue ones contained, and we can get them later.” Steve jogged past Thor and stood near the cave. Pointing, like a clock’s hand at 11, he gestured at the space where the lip of the cliff met the tree line. Natasha took his cue and moved there. “She’s the hinge!” Steve shouted when the wind’s howl threatened to drown out his voice. “Iron Man, Thor, and I will push forward until every Chitauri is either dead, or in the crater. Barton will take out any aliens who slip past us, and Hulk will hold back the majority of the horde.” Everyone nodded, but Steve still asked, “Questions?”

 

A flash of lightning. Thor leapt forward and caught it with Mjolnir just before it could hit a combustible Chitauri. After the others blinked away the stars in their eyes they turned to see the god twirling his hammer with a flourish before pouring the electricity safely into the ground behind him. “My friends,” he declared, “this battle will be easier than it first appeared to—”

 

“ _CAP_!” Barton shouted. All eyes turned to the archer, and then immediately to what he was pointing at. The Hulk’s toes had lost purchase, and he began to slide. He growled. Sweat and rain turned his skin slippery. All their talking had attracted more Chitauri from inside the cave. The 800 pushed forward against each other, the walls, the ceiling, and the Hulk, whose eyes widened with panic three seconds before the weight and strength of the aliens overwhelmed him and he landed flat on his nose. In less than a second, the green skin disappeared under hundreds of gray bodies pouring out of the cave like water.

 

The containment was breached.

 

“ _Get all of them in the crater_!” Steve managed to shout before the first wave required his full attention. Three pairs of hands wielding six pairs of rusted steak knives and warped meat cleavers slammed into his shield.

 

Natasha met the oncoming storm by running towards it. She jumped onto one Chitauri’s bent knee, flipped up onto a second’s shoulders, and clamped her legs against him like a jockey on a horse. As the creature turned in lopsided circles, staggering under her weight, Natasha used both hands to slam knife after knife through the aliens’ skulls. Bodies dropped. When there were enough surrounding her to trip up the Chitauri she was riding, she jumped onto another one.

 

Tony retracted his armored gloves into his gauntlets. Pulling a short, slim trigger of a Beretta was easier with bare fingers. Stark took out the first dozen at his twelve o’clock, then tucked his hands against his chest, bent into a linebacker’s crouch, and used his suit like a battering ram to shove aliens over the edge of the cliff.

 

Thor raised his hammer high over his head, and then crashed the top right corner of it into the dirt. The shockwave knocked a hundred Chitauri off their feet, and at least half of those went tumbling into the crater. Despite focusing on only one corner, the blast wave was still too wide, and both Cap and Iron Man were knocked off their feet as well. Thor sprinted forward and attacked any Chitauri near them.

 

Above the fray, Hawkeye fired arrows in two’s and three’s as fast as he could. Any alien who got past his teammates took one through the brain. When more than five shoved their way past the distracted super-soldier, Clint changed tactics. With one arrow after the other he stabbed the stumbling Chitauri not through their temples, but through their feet and hands. One on the left took a spike through its palm, and wound up pinned to the tree beside him. Shrieking, it grabbed another trunk with its right hand to try and yank free. Clint let another arrow fly. It embedded into the second tree, and the hand with it. Barton paused briefly to examine his handiwork, and grinned. He’d turned the creature into a barrier. Its body blocked any Chitauri trying to get through that opening. Clint shifted positions and did the same thing to the next pair of trees, and the pair after that. He filled a third gap, which was extra wide, by shooting the Chitauris’ feet. They were stuck to tree roots. Flailing knives in their hands only succeeded in slicing up their nearby clones.

 

Suddenly, dozens of aliens flew up in the air like hot water out of a geyser. Roaring, the Hulk rolled out from under them and started punching and kicking when they fell back to earth. More and more bodies either dropped or tumbled into the crater. Rainwater turned the mud and blood into an ankle-deep sludge. The mire slowed the Chitauri, but also handicapped Steve, Tony, and Thor. It helped Natasha. She perched on the shoulders of an alien whose boots had stiffened like the sludge was cement. More bodies went down under her.

 

Bloody, sticky black mud splashed up Steve’s leg. The Chitauri he shoved down with his shield sliced up his uniform as they fell. If his boots were five bucks cheaper, the daggers and machetes he was forced to step on as he moved forward would’ve reached skin.

 

Tony stopped trying to aim. He double checked that his teammates were out of the line of fire, and just started sending bullets forward. Aimed or not, there were so many targets that the bullets never failed to take one down.

 

_Click. Click. Click_. Tony scowled at the empty chambers. He shouted for Natasha to toss him another clip, but she didn’t hear him.

 

Thor looked back over his shoulder at the dozens of Chitauri that made it past him. Shock showed through his mud-splattered face when he saw that they were stuck, bouncing off each other, contained by the wall of bodies Hawkeye created. The final gap, the aliens’ only way to escape other than off the cliff, was the ten-foot space between a tree trunk and the far side of the stone cave. Thor hurried to plug the hole, but hesitated when Barton shouted his name over the coms. Clint fired a grappling hook into some branches, then Tarzan-ed himself down to Thor’s side. The archer pointed at the six aliens about to be struck by Mjolnir swinging like a baseball bat. “Keep them there!” Clint ordered. “Hold them still for just five more seconds!” Confused, but trusting, Thor obeyed. Clint unhinged his grappling hook, retracted the wire back into a wide arrow, and replaced the hook head with a fist-sized iron cube. Clint dropped to one knee and braced his elbow against the cave to steady his aim. Once unleashed, the fist arrow plunged through each Chitauri’s abdomen one after the other, like a string going through beads. It skewered six of them, landed securely in a tree, and then Clint pulled the wire taut before securing his end to the thick rock. The fence was complete. Barton and Thor shared a fist bump before they jumped back into the battle.

 

Metal on metal. The Chitauri’s crude weapons only squeaked against the Iron Man armor, not even leaving a scratch in the wake. Tony positioned himself on the edge of the cliff and kicked one alien after another down into the bowl below. The black sludge leaking from the aliens’ bodies briefly covered his eyes, and Tony scrambled to wipe the faceplate clean. Alien hands reached for him then, and it was only then that he remembered his hands were still unprotected. The armored hands descended from the gauntlets at bullet speed, but only after the approaching aliens lunged and scratched up Tony’s bare skin. The cuts burned as much as they bled and Tony hissed, cat-like.

 

Natasha yelped when a knife nearly sliced her throat. She pivoted, flipped over the alien’s back and stabbed both of her daggers through its neck. Using it as a full body shield, the agent retreated until her back hit the side of the cave. Romanoff jumped up and kicked her legs back, then pushed hard against the rock. The alien in her grip toppled forward into the next—and the next, and the next, and the next. A domino effect of sorts sent dozens more bodies over the cliff.

 

The Hulk swung his arms like helicopter blades. Any head near his fists flew off, decapitated. One Chitauri’s knife broke through the thick green hide near Hulk’s bellybutton. Roaring, the creature lifted the alien up by its ankles, swung it around, and then crumpled up the body with his hands and under-handed it towards the cliff like a ball, knocking aliens down like bowling pins.

 

Thor leapt over Barton’s barrier and returned with an uprooted tree in his arms. “Avengers!” he called, “duck!”

 

Hulk, Steve, Tony, Natasha, and Clint immediately hit the ground. The god raised the tree over his head and, with a mighty yell, heaved it towards the cliff. The tree was so tall and wide that it took fifty Chitauri with it into the cauldron.

 

A gasp over the coms. Every Avenger briefly froze and listened. “ _Hit_ ,” a breathy voice said.

 

“Hit what?” Thor replied.

 

“Thor, remember our training? That codeword means someone’s down!” Steve snapped.

 

“Down… Where?”

 

“It means I’m _hurt_!” Romanoff sputtered. Five heads turned to see Natasha with three aliens dogpiled on top of her, and one knife stabbed to the hilt into her abdomen.

 

“ _Nat_!” Clint cried.

 

Red blood mixed with the black slime. Natasha yanked out the blade, filled the hole with one of her field bandages, and then rolled over onto her stomach with a groan. She reached up to clasp the stone, maybe to crawl away. After long seconds of effort and only an inch forward, the Black Widow collapsed and didn’t move again.

 

The light changed. Steve looked up to see if the moon had stopped hiding behind the clouds, but the local glow remained gold instead of silver. The team turned and watched, shocked, as the Iron Man armor peeled off Stark’s body piece by piece and sailed over the crowd. Tony kept pointing at Natasha until she was completely covered in the metal, protected. The transaction was noisy, though, and most of the Chitauri immediately turned towards her and piled on. Natasha disappeared from sight beneath them and the light from the armor was smothered out. Darkness descended over the rain-soaked scene like a black velvet curtain. Steve blinked his super-soldier eyes, trying to adjust to the sudden darkness.

 

Blind, Hulk sniffed and then let out a roar that vibrated everyone’s teeth. His nose pointed him at the cave and he dove into it at full speed. Spinning his arms and elbows and pumping his legs and knees, the Hulk pushed his way forward through the hundreds of remaining Chitauri not unlike a salmon swimming upstream. Roars echoed from the cave, and then disappeared. The team could still hear the telltale sound of skulls smashed against rock.

 

With the moon blocked and their only light source covered in bodies, the other Avengers were as blind as their enemy.

 

“Close ranks!” Captain America yelled. “Tony, Thor, Clint, come to my voice!” Thunder grumbled in the distance. More followed it when lightning crisscrossed through the woods. For a split second, the strobe light effect gave the Avengers enough time to spot Steve and muscle their way towards him. A machete clipped Clint’s ear. A clever embedded in Thor’s silver armor through one of the very few, very narrow seams. Tony gasped when a dagger sliced down his naked arm. Cap felt his friend’s warm blood when their blind, grasping hands connected. The pair pivoted and didn’t let go of each other until each was sure that the other was steady. The foursome stood back-to-back in a tight circle. For every Chitauri they kicked away, two more stumbled forwards. Half crawled on their knees towards their prey, unable to stand in the deepening pools of rainwater and slime.

 

Barton reached into every pocket on his person and passed out the last of the ammo. “Fire!” Cap ordered once all four were armed. Bullets erupted from six Berettas. Thor fumbled with his for nearly a full minute before he figured out how to work the weapon.

 

By the light of the weapons’ discharge, between the drops of rain and the gold casings leaping out of the Berettas’ chambers, Cap examined his teammates out of the corner of his eye. If he wasn’t already so very familiar with Thor’s shape and posture, he might have mistaken him for a larger Chitauri—that’s how soaked the god was in the black gunk that all but camouflaged him. Barton had used up the last of his ammo fast and started swinging his bow like a samurai’s staff weapon. His quiver was completely void of arrows. Tony favored his left leg. He was as red as Thor was black, though Rogers wasn’t sure if it was his blood or someone else’s. When all of his bullets were gone, Tony started using his Beretta like a short club and knocking the aliens on the head. Steve tossed his weapon aside when it was used up. He switched his full attention to the shield and decapitated aliens with its sharpest edge. Hulk roared his fury from deep in the cave.

 

The squealing Chitauri drove the group towards the edge of the cliff. Behind and below their feet, hundreds of aliens shrieked as they scraped and clawed their way up the bowl of the crater. Red blood speckled their duct-taped cleavers. Black slime dripped from their mouths like drool. One wrapped a scaly arm around Clint’s ankle, but the archer broke his bow over its head before he could yank him down into the cauldron. Frustrated, Barton threw both halves of his weapon like spears.

 

Thunder from above—closer than ever. The louder noise startled the Chitauri and they scampered forward like spooked cattle. The surge knocked Tony on his ass. He slid his feet under him but failed to stand back up. Blood seeped through every quadrant of his uniform. Steve immediately placed his body between Stark and the stabbing knives. Metal pinged off the shield.

 

Thor resembled a Whac-A-Mole player—driving his hammer down on every head in range. “There appears to be only one option left, my friends!” he yelled over the wind, the rain, and the yelps. “If we do not end this now, our enemies could swarm the village.”

 

Steve spat sweat and slime and blood on the ground. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re right!”

 

Clint knelt behind Tony, slid his arms under the inventor’s, and hoisted him up. “Could use that jetpack now,” he joked. When he stepped back his heels touched the edge of the cliff.  

 

Tony managed a smile. “Could use Iron Man armor for all of us.” Blood stained his teeth. “Kinda wish I hadn’t destroyed every other suit I had. Could’ve brought them to rescue us.”

 

“Kinda wish we could summon the Quinjet remotely,” Clint thought out loud. “Autopilot, auto-locate, auto-landing.”

 

Cap spared a moment to look back over his shoulder and smile at his friends. “Kinda wish we had more time to see if we could really be a team.”

 

Tony smiled. “We’re about to die together, blaze of glory style. That makes us a team.”

 

Steve nodded. “That makes us brothers.” He reached back and gripped Tony’s elbow. Stark returned the gesture, and also grabbed Clint’s shoulder.

 

“Ready, brothers?” Thor asked. He didn’t make eye contact.

 

“As we’ll ever be,” Barton decided. A Chitauri ripped his left pantleg open with a knife and wrapped wet, reptilian fingers around his knee. He started to sink into the crater. Tony refused to let go, and began to fall with him. Steve Frisbee-ed his shield at a final foe. He tightened trembling fingers around Stark’s arm, and closed his eyes.

 

Thor raised Mjolnir and took control of the clouds. Every spark of electricity for miles immediately changed directions and sped into the hammer’s core. Mjolnir sizzled and glowed. Steve could feel the heat of it on his eyelids. And then, using both hands and all his strength, Thor slammed Mjolnir into the ground. Tendrils of fire erupted from it and immediately set the black goop ablaze.

 

Something large and green tackled Steve, Tony, and Clint barely a blink’s worth of time before the flames devoured them.

 

**To Be Continued**


	8. Triage

The Jekyll and Hyde balance between Bruce Banner and the Hulk had become less black and white in recent years. It used to be lights out for one, lights on for the other—a flipped switch. Then, after time, feelings and chemicals and even thoughts began to bleed through. Dr. Banner never would’ve picked up Loki’s scepter in the Helicarrier lab if Hulk hadn’t been so drawn to it. The Hulk never would’ve taken orders from Captain America or caught Tony when he fell out of the wormhole if Banner hadn’t communicated that they were not only on the “Do Not Smash” list, but on the “Protect at All Costs” list. When the Hulk roared for Tony to wake up, to breathe when he lay on that New York City street, that was Bruce’s frantic, pleading voice just as much as his. Banner had just met the man. They’d barely exchanged a hundred words. But Bruce knew that Tony Stark was special in ways that the newspapers didn’t cover. He saw the scientist _and_ the walking weapon and looked at them both in awe.

 

And, on that parking deck, while Stark lay suffocating in his own suit, it was Hulk who jolted Bruce out of his panic and reminded him that his own fingers were the best tools to save Tony. Later, in the cave, Hulk sensed the gathering electricity, but it was Bruce who knew it meant instant death. Together they sprinted on the Hulk’s feet out and across the battlefield—over, under, and through the horde of zombie Chitauri. Thor’s hammer came down. Hulk’s arms reached up. He seized Rogers, Stark, and Barton, folded their bodies tight against his chest, and **_ran_**.

 

The fire ran faster.

 

The force of the explosion shot Hulk over the crater like a cannonball. He tumbled head over heels through the air while blades and rocks assaulted his body and fire burned him faster than his automatic healing could compensate. Blisters blossomed across his green skin like goosebumps. Bones shattered when he landed, bouncing, rolling through the rocky woods. Deaf, blind, dizzy, angry, and wounded, he bumped off trees and stones like he was in a pinball machine. The only direction he knew to go in was away from the chemical-laced stench of smoke. He didn’t know what else to do but run. He didn’t even know for sure if he still had bodies in his arms. He didn’t know if his own bodyweight hadn’t pancaked them flat. He ran.

 

He ran until the rain stopped.

 

He ran until the sun came up.

 

He ran until all traces of smoke dissipated on the morning wind.

 

And he kept running until he was nearly incapable of going a single step further.

 

_Not yet_ , Banner begged when Hulk collapsed onto his knees. _See that cabin? On your left, about 200 feet away? Get there, you hear me? Get them inside!_

 

Hulk whimpered. Green blood dripped from a thousand cuts.

 

No one had been in the one-room cabin in years. The roof was Swiss cheese, and the windows were boarded up and tarped over. The front door listed on its one intact hinge. Birds and more than one family of startled raccoons and possums dashed out of the building when the Hulk approached. He made it to the front porch before his legs gave out and he collapsed on all-fours. Three limp bodies tumbled out of his trembling arms and landed, unmoving, on the warped wooden porch. Hulk sent a feeling of regret and apology to his alter ego when he could no longer stay conscious.

 

The injuries didn’t completely heal during the transformation.

 

Bruce Banner woke up **_screaming_**.

 

\---------

 

Natasha dreamed she was flying and, when the dream abruptly ended, realized that she actually was.

 

Thor nearly dropped her when he landed, gasping, beside what was left of the Avengers’ Quinjet. So many boulders from the exploding cave hit the jet that it resembled a pile of scrap metal. “Thor,” Nat coughed. Her own voice echoed back to her and she realized then that she was inside Tony’s armor. JARVIS must have read her mind because he opened the faceplate. “Thor, what happened?”

 

Thor wiped ash and soot off his forehead before he spoke with the voice of an elderly chimneysweep. “We won the day, Agent Romanoff.” The god set down his hammer, and then shrugged Cap’s Vibranium shield off his shoulder. It glowed slightly as if fresh out of a metalsmith’s furnace. “Every alien was destroyed, as was the HYDRA base… And, roughly, a square mile of trees.”

 

Nat barely heard anything after she saw the shield. “The others,” she whispered. “Where are the others?”

 

Thor’s head swiveled as he looked around the area for help. “Tony Stark saved your life by magic-ing his suit of armor onto your body. He sacrificed his safety to preserve yours.”

 

Nat lifted her head as high as she could. “Tony?” she called. “Steve? _Clint_!”

 

“As I recall,” Thor continued, “you were injured. What can I do to help? Perhaps I should fly you straight to a hosp—”

 

Adrenaline returned Natasha’s strength and she backhanded Thor with a titanium gauntlet. “ _Thor, where’s our team_?”

 

Thor opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it once more before he swallowed, and bowed his head. “There was no other choice,” he gulped. “We had to end it—we had to protect the great citizens of Kentucky-land. I summoned my lightning and… And…” Foreign liquid pooled in his eyes. “I couldn’t,” he whispered, “I couldn’t find their… Their bodies.”

 

Natasha shook her head. “They’re not dead,” she squeaked. “They can’t be dead. _They can’t be_.”

 

“I am so very sorry, Agent Roman—Natasha,” whispered Thor, “but unless Odin himself intervened, our comrades are gone. Our only mission now is to get to safety. We will mourn them properly when you are restored.”

 

Natasha didn’t notice that she was holding her breath. “I don’t—” she started, but fainted before she could complete the thought.

 

\---------

 

A soaked, red-eyed Bruce crawled like an Army soldier under barbed wire. The outdoor faucet with the attached hose protruded from the opposite end of the porch, but his slow-mending bones and blisters made the distance feel like ten thousand. But Bruce endured—eventually crying out in pain after three or four breaths instead of every two—and turned on the spout. Clay-colored well water spat, misted, and finally burst out. Bruce couldn’t cork cries of pain when he sprayed his naked body down and wiped away flakes of burned skin, green and red blood, clumps of dark hair, ash, and the sulfuric black slime still stuck to his hands. The exhaustion hit after he quenched his thirst. Bruce nearly passed out then and there—face down beside a rocking chair listening to the grateful chirps of early morning sparrows. But, the semiconscious Hulk reminded him that there were three bodies nearby—bodies that may or may not be breathing.

 

With a groan rattling through his throat, Bruce crawled back to his team.

 

Clint was closest. He lay spread-eagled on his back, unconscious, and slathered in black slime, red blood, green blood, mud, and rainwater. The only way Bruce could tell he was breathing was because of the shallow bubbles rising and then popping from his lips. Bruce yanked Barton onto his side by his uniform, held the hose above him, and sprayed all the muck and grime off his face and neck. Clint choked. Clint coughed. He spat and cleared his throat, but didn’t wake up. Bruce examined the rest of him, cleaning as he went. Bruises and cuts, cuts and bruises. Bruce found more than he could count. The archer was probably wounded worse than Banner could tell with a cursory glance, and but he was unlikely to die in the next ten minutes. So, in triage mode, Bruce continued to his next patient.

 

Tony Stark always looked oddly shrunk without his armor on, and smaller still in a tight fetal position. His entire body trembled—less than a seizure but more than a shiver. He was bleeding the worst. Sacrificing his armor mid-battle left him with only the thin flight suit for protection, and it had neither the thickness nor the durability of Cap or Hawkeye’s uniform. As he washed his friend’s unconscious body—at least the naked skin he could see—Bruce found bleeding wounds _everywhere_ : on the crown of Tony’s head, behind his ears, crisscrossing his cheeks and chin, across his throat, between his fingers, and even across the palm of his hands as if he’d defended himself from a blade with nothing but skin. Bruce peeled back an inch of frayed fabric on Tony’s hip, but that light pressure alone caused the inventor to flinch and whisper Pepper’s name.

 

“Doc?”

 

Bruce jumped at Steve’s voice. He’d been listening only to Stark’s heaving breaths. Half of Bruce expected to see Captain America towering over him with his fists braced against his hips. Instead, Steve lay on his side right where the Hulk dropped him. Eyes half-closed, body still, blood dripping, skin blushed with burns. Bruce wouldn’t have guessed he was conscious if he hadn’t spoken.

 

A pink tongue licked pale lips. “What happened?” Steve asked. “This isn’t how I imagined Heaven. It’s too… Bloody.”

 

“The Hulk happened.” That was all Banner needed to say.

 

“Mm,” was Steve’s only response. He walked his fingers forward until his knuckles bumped into Tony’s arm. Then, gently but quickly, he felt for and found Stark’s wrist to confirm a heartbeat.

 

Heat on Bruce’s limbs. He looked down to see that his body had finally healed, though the exhaustion was only getting worse. “Cap, can you move at all?”

 

“Trying…” Steve sighed.

 

“Here.” Banner dragged the hose over. He hosed off the worst of the muck, and then held the water to Steve’s lips. “Drink. It’ll help.”

 

“Tired…”

 

“I know.” Bruce searched for the right thing to say and, instead, found the right tone of voice. “Open your mouth, soldier!” he barked. Steve instantly obeyed and drank several mouthfuls without resistance. Blue eyes blinked with alertness.

 

Steve tried to do a push-up. The color of his face changed—pale ivory to ghost white. “Broken,” he muttered.

 

“What’s broken?”

 

“Bones.” Cap blinked through the morning sunlight and spotted the cabin. “Shelter?”

 

“And supplies, if we’re lucky.” Bruce looked at a dead garden, a toppled cement birdbath, and what looked like the rusted remains of an old truck overrun with vines. Bones hung from ropes strung between trees. A pair of rubber boots sat abandoned. “Looks like an old hunter’s cabin. Might be a shotgun in there.”

 

Weapons weren’t on Steve’s list of priorities. “Cover,” he mumbled. “Find shelter, water, food… Meds… Sled!”

 

“What?”

 

Rogers cocked his chin at the far corner of the cabin. A flat, rectangular, red plastic sled with twine reins stood propped up against a wall. “Roll Barton onto that. Drag him inside.”

 

Fatigue threatened Bruce’s concentration, courage, and confidence. “Cap, I… I’m not sure I—”

 

“Bruce.” It was Steve’s turn to use an “Army” voice. “We have to get them out of the elements. You can do it. Get them inside.”

 

Maybe it was because Captain America gave the order. Maybe it was because Barton chose at that moment to start coughing again. Maybe it was because a red pool of blood encircled Tony’s head like a halo. Or, maybe it was because there was literally no other choice. Whatever the reason, Bruce found his second wind. He got up on bare feet, retrieved the sled, and gently rolled Clint onto it. He dragged Clint inside. He dragged Tony inside. When he went back to Cap to see if he could walk but found him barely conscious, he opted to drag the super-soldier as well. Then, because the spigot above the kitchen plumbing didn’t work, Bruce tugged the running hose in through a broken window and let the sink begin to fill up with water. Once the door was shut and his three friends were still breathing, he collapsed onto the wooden floor beside them.

 

The one-room cabin was barely bigger than Bruce’s bedroom back at Avengers Tower. Sun-faded rugs covered half of the wooden floors and deer anglers hung above a small brick fireplace. Four wooden bar stools sat around a dusty oak table in the center of the room. Silver cans peeked out of splintered cupboards. The open bathroom door stood between a dead, lopsided grandfather clock and a wall of shelves packed with whiskey bottles and dogeared paperbacks. Rusty Kentucky license plates decorated the high corners where the walls met the ceiling. Someone had piled cast iron frying pans, stained plates, and bent silverware atop the remains of a cracked gas stove. Curious flies and honeybees soared in and out of the broken windows. Overflowing ash trays on a wooden chest divided the kitchen from the sleeping area, which was nothing but a king-sized mattress tossed on the floor in front of a closet stuffed with blue jeans and flannel shirts.

 

Bruce closed his eyes. He would rest, and then he would get to work…

 

Steve sighed beside him. “Stay awake, Doc. Stark and Barton need you. Look for a phone. Look for bandages.”

 

Bruce didn’t open his eyes. “Just one more minute…”

 

A gurgling sound. Bruce started awake. Tony was choking—probably on his own blood. Bruce lurched forward and tilted the inventor onto his side. Red mud drained from Tony’s throat only after Bruce swatted him on the back. “On your feet, Banner,” Bruce whispered to himself. “No time to rest. _Get up_.” He did… After three tries. “All right, Steve, I’ll check the bathroom for medical supplies. Can you get their clothes off? I need to see the extent of their injuries and get all of you in something dry and warm. Cap? _Steve_!”

 

Steve passed out.

 

Bruce was alone.

 

**To Be Continued**


	9. Never Thanked You

 

Bruce yanked on a pair of faded blue jeans that were too big, and buttoned up a long-sleeved flannel shirt that was too small. Socks and shoes would have to wait until the puddles of blood dried up. He filled a cast-iron pot with water from the hose and set it on the one intact burner. A few matches, clicking knobs, and prayers later, the old stove came to life.

 

Pulling the plastic sled behind him, Bruce started to sweep every nook and cranny of the cabin. Into it he tossed anything and everything that could help his three teammates lying burned, bruised, bleeding, and unconscious on the floor: mittens, sheets, electrical tape, gauze, matches, buckets, Band-Aids, knives, soap, pillowcases, pliers, tweezers, mint-flavored dental floss, scissors, safety pins, coffee grounds, needles, dented cans of beets and black beans from the cupboard, a wool hat, blankets, a broken curtain rod, pain meds, rubber bands, a plastic shower curtain, trash bags, yellow latex dishwashing gloves, a magnifying glass, red bandanas, curtains, empty glass jugs, towels, a thermometer, bungee cords, and one rack of deer antlers.

 

He slid on the latex gloves and used every square inch of gauze he could find to plug Tony’s head wound. “Needs stitches,” Bruce decided. “Might need staples.”

 

He used a blanket, the bungee cords, and the curtain rod to set Steve’s broken leg before his super-healing misaligned the bones. “No phone, Captain. Coms are broken. If you have any ideas, feel free to wake up right now and tell me.”

 

He used the soft valley between two antlers to prop up Barton’s swollen, sprained ankle after wrapping it with strips of plastic cut from the shower curtain. “Just one giant bruise, aren’t you?” Bruce teased. “Those slashes on your shoulder almost look like an arrow. Remind me to get a mirror so you can see the artistry.”  

 

Bruce stood above them, uncapped a bottle of caffeine pills he found in the bathroom cabinet, and swallowed four of them in one gulp. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he announced. “I’m going to do what I can to keep you alive, and you’re going to fight as hard as you can to _stay_ alive.” Banner looked from Clint’s face to Tony’s, from Tony’s to Steve’s. “And, because I’m on my own here, and terrified that HYDRA reinforcements will kick down the door any moment, I’m just going to keep talking, all right? Maybe I’ll tell some jokes. Maybe I’ll sing!” His deaf teammates didn’t reply. “The only way to stop my abysmal offkey singing is to wake up and tell me you’re ok. Got it? Here we go.”

 

Banner opened his mouth. He couldn’t think of a single damn song.

 

“Better not complain about this, Tony.” A knife and scissors quickly cut through Stark’s flight suit. “You guys have seen me naked post-Hulk enough times that this shouldn’t bother either of us.” Bruce started to count the cuts, bruises, and scrapes on Tony’s chest and arms. He stopped after he got to one hundred. “Never thanked you for letting me stay in the tower after New York,” Bruce said as he worked. “And for, you know, feeding me, and letting me play with your toys, and lying to the police about where I was.” Bruce peeled off the rest of the wet, bloodstained fabric and tossed it into a pile. “I lied,” Bruce whispered. “When you asked me why I was going through Stark Industries’ inventory, it wasn’t because I was ‘just curious.’” Banner rolled Tony onto his side and checked for additional wounds on his back. The cuts were deeper, but not nearly as bad as his head. “I was looking for weapons. I’ve tried every gun, every poison possible to… to kill myself.” The bottom half of Tony’s body had the least damage, so Bruce covered it with a yellow bedsheet. “I thought that if anyone in the world had the technology to destroy the Other Guy, it would be you.” Bruce checked the back of Tony’s head and paled at the amount of blood already seeped through the gauze. “Of course, if I killed myself then, I wouldn’t be here to save your ass now…” Banner sighed. “And if you die now, none of that matters…”

 

Bruce slid over to Clint. “Oh, shit,” he hissed when he removed the archer’s uniform. Some sword-wielding Chitauri slashed Barton deep and wide from his left shoulder down to his right hip. “Never thanked you,” Bruce said as he cleaned the wound, “for, well, anchoring me after we caught Loki. Didn’t know where I was when I woke up on Tony’s floor, didn’t know what happened, didn’t know if I’d leveled Manhattan myself…” Bruce willed his trembling fingers to stay still as he threaded the dental floss through a needle. “I woke up, and you were there… Did I even know your name at that point? Doesn’t matter.” After saying a prayer that Barton would stay unconscious, Bruce started sewing up the wound. His stomach rolled. Blood soaked through his jeans. “You were there, and you answered every question before I could ask it. And then—and I need you to understand how phenomenal this was—then you brought me clothes, a bottle of water, and just sat there talking about shawarma and Loki’s dumb costume.” Bruce chuckled. It took three rolls of dental floss to sew up Clint’s back.

 

Bruce moved on to his third patient. The splint was holding, and the circulation was uninterrupted. Banner stripped off Steve’s uniform and covered him with a green bedsheet before propping his broken leg up on a stained white bucket. Blisters dotted Cap’s arm and half of his face from his eyebrow down to his chin. The super-soldier must have taken a blast of fire a tenth of a second before the Hulk got to him. “Never thanked you either, Cap…” Bruce whispered as he wrapped the blistered skin up in a bandage. “Never thanked you for inviting me to join the team. Tony just assumed I was on board but you… You met me for coffee, and you thanked me for helping with Loki, and you made sure I was comfortable, and then you _asked_.” A few of Cap’s cuts already started to heal. It took a handful of Band-Aids to cover the rest. “You didn’t have to include me.” Bruce sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “You could’ve determined that I’m more trouble than I’m worth, and nobody would’ve argued—least of all me.”

 

Strong fingers suddenly gripped Banner’s sleeve. “Wouldn’t be the same team without you,” panted a voice.

 

“Cap?” Bruce gasped.

 

Steve’s bloodshot eyes landed on Tony’s white face and stayed there. “’They gonna be ok?” he slurred.

 

Bruce avoided the question by grabbing a bottle of Acetaminophen. “How many do you need?” he asked softly.

 

Steve shook his head. “My metabolism burns drugs away if they don’t go directly into my blood. Save the painkillers for Tony and Clint.”

 

A popcorn-like sound behind them. Bruce stretched up on his knees and looked at the oven. “Clean water,” he explained. “You can drink it all when it cools down.”

 

“Thanks, Bruce.” Steve noticed the bedsheet. “Pants first.”

 

Noon came and went.

 

Around 3:00, Barton woke up swinging punches and drawing back an imaginary bow. Half of his ‘stitches’ ripped. With most of the bandages used up (the majority on Tony), Bruce had to bind yarn mittens and wool hats to Barton’s back with electrical tape. He stayed awake long enough to put on jeans and a black t-shirt, drink some water, take some pills, and hold down some food. Bruce wanted him to rest on the mattress, but both Clint and Steve insisted that Tony needed it more than they did. Like a loyal dog, Clint curled up on sleeping bags at the foot of the bed, and fell asleep.

 

Steve stayed awake but silent the rest of the afternoon. When he wasn’t staring at the ceiling deep in thought, he was wiping the remaining dirt, blood, and slime off his body (and then Clint’s, and then Tony’s) with a bar of soap and a bandana. Later, Bruce determined that Tony could be moved to the mattress safely. Banner transported him with the sled, but couldn’t lift his entire body up without Steve’s help. Once Tony was dressed in jeans and a black sleeveless shirt, and settled in with rolled up gray pillowcases standing in for an actual pillow, Steve hopped over to the sleeping bags and passed out beside Clint.

 

Once again, Banner was alone.

 

\----------

 

Except for masquerades, Halloween parties, and any professional sports game, a hospital was the easiest place for Nick Fury to go undercover. As a patient, he was only seen as a patient. As a doctor, he was only seen as a doctor. This time he dressed up like a janitor and pretended to empty the trash while a nurse checked ‘Natalie Rushman’ for infection.

 

“Is she all right?” Fury asked with a Southern accent. “Heard this one was a doorbell delivery.”

 

The nurse didn’t look up from the tablet she was tapping. “An off-duty paramedic found her on the sidewalk outside the hospital. Guess the jerk who attacked meant to stab her, not kill her.”

 

“A real peach.”

 

“Mmm,” the nurse replied. She left the room. Fury shut the door behind her.

 

Natasha Romanoff hugged her bandaged wound in her sleep. Lucky for her the Chitauri’s weapon went clean in and out. Organs were nicked, but not punctured. Fury stared at her porcelain face for good minute, noting that she looked remarkably young. And then, because technically he was no longer the agent’s boss, Nick leaned forward and kissed her softly on the forehead.

 

“Tell me you found them.”

 

Fury picked up Nat’s hand and pressed it close to his heart. “Klein’s working on it. Civilian rescue teams haven’t found any trace, but that doesn’t mean our techs won’t.”

 

“We blew up HYDRA’s satellite too soon,” Natasha sighed. “Could use it now to find them…”

 

“There’s a good chance Hulk is alive but buried in that cave.”

 

“I keep expecting them to come through the door.” A tiny warm tear sneaked down the Black Widow’s face. “And people wonder why I prefer to work alone…” She kept her eyes shut.

 

Fury’s throat worked. “Public doesn’t know yet. Nobody knows but a handful of us. I thought you might want to be the one to… To…”

 

Romanoff’s eyes sprung open. “To tell Laura and the kids that Clint got blown to hell with an army of alien zombies?”

 

Fury squeezed her hand. “I won’t stop looking. We won’t. The Avengers are our best hope to—”

 

“ _I don’t give a damn about the Avengers_!” Natasha’s face shifted three shades past beet red. “Right now, I don’t care about SHIELD, or HYDRA, or the government, or the Winter Soldier or—or anything! Clint, Steve, Tony, and Bruce were more than teammates! We were friends _on the verge of becoming family and now I’ve lost them just like I’ve lost everyone I ever_ —” A sob. Natasha sniffed. Deep breaths in and out calmed her after a minute. “Where’s Thor?” she whispered.

 

Fury set her hand back down on the bed and squeezed it even tighter. “He dumped Cap’s shield the Iron Man suit at my feet, told me what happened and then—then he went back to Asgard. Said he needed time to properly mourn his friends.”

 

“Guess we’ll see him in a few years, then,” Nat snorted. She swallowed several times, cleared her throat, and then said soft and low, “I shouldn’t hate him.”

 

Fury closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. “He did the right thing.”

 

“Funny how often ‘doing the right thing’ gets people killed,” Nat whispered. And then, because of the IV pumping drugs into her, or perhaps not, Natasha turned her back on Fury and tried to sleep.

 

\----------

 

Sunset came and went.

 

Bruce tossed the mangled uniforms, slime-slick towels, and the blood-soaked remains of the curtains onto what was left of the plastic shower curtain and dragged the bundle out past the dead garden. Cold blood that wasn’t his stained his bare feet so, on the way back, he dunked them in rain puddles. Back inside the cabin, he ate his first meal of the day—two spoons of pinto beans and half a can of tomato sauce—and lit the one gas lamp they had. He set the lantern on a barstool, and collapsed down on the edge of the mattress.

 

Tony’s brow felt hot to Bruce’s hand, and his pulse beat too slow. Sweat poured from every pore and dampened his shirt. Bruce mopped his friend’s forehead and ghosted a few drops of water past his white lips.  “If you don’t wake up in a few hours, Tony, then you’ll really be in trouble.”

 

A body shifted at the foot of the bed. Cap peeked over the mattress, blinked, and then pulled himself up on one foot. “How is he?”

 

“The same. Better, maybe.” Bruce grinded his teeth together.

 

“Natasha needs to give you a lesson on how to be a better liar.” Steve hopped over to the other side of the mattress and, like Bruce, sat next to Tony’s shoulder. “He has a fever...?”

 

Bruce retrieved the thermometer from his pocket. “I’m afraid to find out.”

 

Steve nodded. “I am, too. Let’s find out anyway.” Gradually, gently, delicately, Steve slid the thermometer between Tony’s lips and held it under his tongue. “104.2 degrees Fahrenheit,” Cap reported when the device beeped.

 

Bruce’s chin dropped to his chest. Clawed fingers scraped through his hair. “Hyperthermia.”

 

Steve’s frown lines looked deeper in the dim light. “He’s hot, not cold.”

 

“Not _hypo_ thermia, _hyper_ thermia! He needs to be in a hospital— _now_.”

 

Cap pointed his thumb at the bathroom. “When I was a kid, my mom would give me an ice bath when my temperature got too high. Water’s pretty cold here. We could fill the tub!”

 

Bruce shook his head. “No, no. Not the thing to do anymore. Shocks the system. Makes the patient worse.” He dunked the bandana in water again and wiped down Tony’s chest.

 

“Worse than dying?” Steve said between clenched teeth. “Bruce, he’s dying, isn’t he?”

 

“He lost a lot of blood.”

 

The vague answer made Steve’s eye twitch. “ _Bruce_.”

 

The doctor held his hands out—a pleading gesture. “There’s no way for me to tell how severe the head injury is. He could have a concussion, he could have severe trauma. He could wake up in five minutes or… Or never.”

 

Stiff jaw and flaring nostrils. Steve stood up on his unbroken leg. “One of us has to go for help.”

 

Bruce stood up. “Not you!”

 

“Clint’s hurt. You have to stay with Tony. My leg will be fully healed in no time.”

 

“And by ‘no time’ you mean 6 days! Minimum!”

 

A sleep eyed Hawkeye suddenly sat up and looked around. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I’m trying to rest over here!”

 

“So am I,” a ghost of a voice answered. Barton, Rogers, and Banner instantly looked at Stark. He blinked back.

 

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve gasped. He collapsed back on the mattress and grabbed Stark’s hand. “Son of a gun, you’re awake.”

 

“Usually am.”

 

Clint hopped up onto the bed and shook Tony’s foot like it was his hand. “Thought you were dead meat, man.”

 

Tony frowned. “Right… Man. Uh, isn’t it polite to introduce yourself when you meet someone for the first time?” Russet eyes focused on Steve, and then on Bruce before returning to Clint. “Not that I’m known for my manners.”

 

Bruce sat down hard. “Don’t panic. Temporary amnesia isn’t unheard of.”

 

Tony cocked an eyebrow at the doctor. “Right. Amnesia. You’re not telling me your names because you forgot your names. JARVIS? Call the paramedics, will you? These fanboys must’ve hit their heads breaking into the mansion.”

 

“I’m Bruce!”

 

“ _Fanboy_?” Clint fumed.

 

“Tony, you’re not in Malibu!” Steve sputtered. “That house doesn’t even exist anymore! You’re…” Steve spotted it, then. Spotted the slight twinkle in Tony’s eyes. “Oh, I hate you so much.”

 

“No, you don’t.” Tony grinned. Laughter bubbled up from his chest.

 

Bruce slapped Tony’s knee. “Not funny!”

 

“You should see your faces! Classic!”

 

“He’s faking it,” Clint realized. He glared daggers at Tony. “You were faking it?”

 

“I knew the JARVIS thing would really sell it. If I’d kept my cool for a few more seconds I would’ve called Rogers here ‘Captain Kirk’!”

 

“If you didn’t have a possible skull fracture I’d give you one,” Rogers growled.

 

“Hm.” Tony scratched the bandage on his head. “Doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. Suppose I got it doing something heroic? Did I save a bus full of orphans? Rescue stranded supermodels? Carry a nuke into space—oh, wait, I already did that.”

 

“Quit the act, Stark,” Steve scolded. “You remember the Chitauri and the cave.”

 

Stark’s smile deflated a little bit. “I’m just teasing, Cap, lighten up. Apparently, we escaped with our lives and now we’re spending a well-deserved, relaxing weekend in…” A frown slid down Tony’s face. “Where the hell are we? Place smells like my grandma’s attic and the bottom of Pepper’s purse. And why is Cap wearing bungee cords?”

 

Steve rolled his eyes. “You were comatose, Stark. This is the new fashion. Yesterday I wore bungee cord-uroys.”

 

Bruce pulled Tony’s arm back down to his side to stop him from scratching the gauze. “Seriously, Tony, you are hurt pretty bad. Fever’s high, pulse is low.”

 

“Please,” Stark scoffed. “I survived surgery in an Afghanistan tent with zero anesthetic. I think I can handle a little headache.”

 

“So you do have a headache? Are you dizzy? Nauseated? Is your vision blurred? Your speech sounds a little slurred and slow, but you did just wake up from a hell of a nap.”

 

Tony shook his head. “None of the above. Hey, Cap, why are you wearing bungee cords?”

 

Rogers, Barton, and Banner exchanged wide-eyed looks. “Knock it off, Stark. You already had your laugh.” Clint started to lie back down on his sleeping bag.

 

The frown deepened. “Why’s so foggy… here?” Tony slurred. Although he faced Steve, his eyes seemed to stare at something behind him. “Is… Is like a rainbow halo but…”

 

Bruce leapt up from the mattress like he saw a poisonous spider on it. “Steve, step back! Get away from him!”

 

Rogers obeyed—partly. He slid a few inches across the mattress, but didn’t stand up. “What? Why?”

 

Tony’s eyes rolled. “Smells like peppermint burning… Like candy canes on fire…”

 

Barton put the pieces together. “Don’t touch him unless he throws up!”

 

Tony got out two more words, “Was… Happen?” and then the seizure hit.

 

**To Be Continued**


	10. Together We're a Time Bomb

Steve Rogers sat on the bed beside Tony. Using the cleanest towel they had and what little soap they had left, he gently scrubbed the dry blood out of Tony’s hair and scalp, careful to clean the head wound without agitating it. Footsteps pounded on the porch. The door opened and Clint Barton hopped in behind a sweating Bruce Banner. Careful not to wake the sleeping Stark, Clint shut the door with his knee and Bruce deposited a long bundle of junk on the floor. Steve counted two plastic snow shovels, a pair of wooden snow skis, an aluminum rake, three handsaws, a hammer, and a six-foot-long ladder. Bruce gulped down some water, checked Tony’s pulse and breathing and, with a quick wave at Steve, dashed back outside.

 

“Did my best but he’s going to shoot himself in the foot with that shotgun,” grunted Clint as he sat down on the floor with his back against the wall. “How can such a smart guy be such a lousy shot?”

 

“Compared to you, we’re all lousy shots,” said Steve.

 

“Didn’t even need superhero serum.” Clint cracked his knuckles and grinned. “We set up a perimeter and rigged some boobytraps.” Barton sorted through the pile until he found a small saw. Balancing the ladder across his lap, he began to cut through the center of each rung.

 

“Can I ask you a question?” Steve asked. He tossed his teammate a half-empty box of crackers that expired in 2005.

 

Clint downed a handful. “You’ll get an honest answer,” he warned.

 

A smile twitched in the corner of Steve’s lips. “Say you knew a secret… A big secret, like—like you saw your best friend’s dame out with another guy—”

 

“Natasha told me about what you saw in that HYDRA bunker.”

 

Steve sat up straight and stared at Barton. “She did?”

 

“Mmm hmm,” Clint hummed.

 

Rogers glanced back down at Tony and confirmed that he was still in the same deep sleep he’d been in since the seizure. “She told you about Howard Stark and the Winter Soldier?”

 

“Yeah.” Clint kept sawing.

 

“Are you going to tell Tony?”

 

Clint’s eyes met Steve’s. “Are you?”

 

“Are _you_?”

 

Clint cleared his throat. He finished sawing through the rungs and spread the two halves of the ladder beside his legs. “Stand up,” he said.

 

“Why?” Steve asked.

 

Barton got up on his one foot. “I eyeballed the measurements. Want to see if I got them right.”

 

“Measurements for what?”

 

Clint flapped his palm, impatient. By the time Steve situated his splinted leg and stood on his unbroken one, Barton had hopped over with the halved ladder. Steve let him slide one half under his left armpit and the other under his right. Then, Clint braced Steve’s hands against a lower pair of rungs. “Test drive,” he encouraged.

 

It took Steve an extra second to realize what Clint had turned the ladder into. Carefully, he relaxed his weight onto the makeshift crutches. He inched forward. He was quick and comfortable by the time he finished a lap around the cabin. “Wow,” he said. “Not bad.”

 

“I’ll rubber band fabric around the top. Maybe find some duct tape for the bottoms so they don’t slip.”

 

“Good thinking. Thanks, Clint.”

 

“I’m useful for more than firing arrows.” Barton shrugged. “I also juggle.”

 

“I’m grateful.” Steve sat back down beside Tony. He put the crutches beside the mattress where he could easily grab them. “What about you? We need you mobile, too.”

 

“Figure I can whittle armpit holes into those skis. In the meantime, I’ll use a barstool.” Barton pulled a stool away from the small table and leaned both hands against the oval-shaped top. “It’s like a walker. Actually, old man, we should probably trade.”

 

“Clint…”

 

Barton shuffled to the corner of the mattress and gently jumped up onto the stool. “I know, I know, I’m avoiding the question. Look, Cap, the only thing I know for sure is that if anyone’s going to tell Stark that secret, it should be you.”

 

Steve sighed. “Because Bucky is my responsibility…”

 

“No.”

 

Cap looked at the archer, half-expecting him to continue speaking. “Because… Because Howard and I were friends…?”

 

Clint busied himself wrapping a leather belt around a hunting knife and testing each pocket in his jeans to figure out which would work best for a sheath. “No.”

 

“Because he’ll probably shoot the messenger, and of the three of us I’m less likely to die?”

 

“ _Bingo_ ,” Clint chuckled. He hesitated briefly, then rested his elbows on his knees and stared at Tony the way a farmer stares at a field desperate for rain. “I can’t tell you what to do, Cap. Wouldn’t try to. But, and don’t take this the wrong way… Maybe you’re asking the wrong question.”

 

“The wrong question?”

 

“You’re wondering how Tony will react when he hears the news. Maybe what you should be thinking about is how _you’ll_ feel if you do or do not tell him.”

 

Steve’s nose wrinkled. “Sounds selfish. This isn’t about me.”

 

“In a way, it is.” Clint rolled his eyes high. “I could hear through that hospital ceiling vent, Steve. You lectured Stark about how the most selfish thing anyone on this team can do is not take care of themselves. Being an Avenger means that we watch each other’s backs, and it means we don’t do anything that could get ourselves hurt. So, ask yourself, will it or will it not hurt you to tell Tony the bad news?”

 

“It wasn’t a lecture,” Steve protested.

 

A cold hand touched Steve’s wrist. A breathy whisper said, “Yeah, it was.”

 

Steve and Clint jumped as if Tony had shouted, “ _Boo_!”

 

“Tony?” Steve rotated his wrist and slid his hand forward to grasp Stark’s wrist. “You, uh, have you been awake… long?”

 

Stark kept his eyes shut. “What bad news are you not telling me?”

 

Clint and Steve exchanged wide-eyed looks. Both hesitated for so long that Tony tapped his fingers against Steve’s skin. “What’s going on?”

 

Barton scooted his barstool closer and propped his sprained ankle up on the mattress. “We didn’t want you to know, Stark, because you’re already in a lot of pain.”

 

Tony’s throat worked. “Was that an earthquake or was I struck by lightning?”

 

“It was a seizure, Tony,” Steve said softly.

 

“Not epileptic…”

 

“Could’ve been because of the head wound, maybe because of the fever.”

 

Tony’s eyebrows lifted. “And your bad news is worse than that?”

 

Steve pressed his lips together tight. He glanced at Clint, who stared back. “Well, Cap, tell him,” Barton prompted.

 

That earned a glare. Steve shook his head and mouthed the words _Are you kidding me_? Barton didn’t cower under the scowl. He didn’t even blink.

 

Stark found the strength to open his eyes. “Steve?”

 

“The bad news is… The bad news is that all of our coms are down and we don’t know where we are,” Steve blurted. “We’ve been trying to find a map or a newspaper or an address on a letter around here but…” Steve avoided Clint’s eyes. “Hulk nabbed us and just ran. Nobody knows we’re alive, let alone where we are, so no rescue anytime soon. No hospital.”

 

Tony licked his lips. “Phone? TV? Computer?”

 

“None,” Clint said. “Nothing electronic at all.”

 

“Any planes flying overhead? A trail marker? Flares?”

 

“Signal fire as a last resort. There’s a good chance HYDRA’s curious about why their lab exploded, so they might be searching for us. We’re not in the best shape to put up a fight.”

 

“How about a megaphone?” Tony lifted his head and examined their new home. “Direction? Front door is pointing at…?”

 

“Southeast,” Barton reported. “That’s all we know.”

 

“Banner’s walking the area,” Steve explained, “but I don’t want him out of sight of the cabin but I want him within shouting distance for now.”

 

“Mmm.” Tony cleared his throat. He wiggled his fingers, rotated his wrists, and bent his arms. “Need help.”

 

“From Bruce?” Steve leaned in closer.

 

“Anyone.”

 

Steve waited—impatiently. “What do you need?”

 

Tony gave him an apologetic look. “I gotta pee.”

 

Clint’s hand flew up. “Not it!”

 

\---------

 

**TWO DAYS LATER**

 

Even with the tire iron, it took Banner a good 20 minutes to fight his way through the vines and pry the radio out of the old truck. A raindrop landed on his nose the moment he crawled out. Bruce slid the vintage tech under his shirt, shouldered the shotgun, and jogged back into the cabin.

 

Barton sat shuffling a deck of cards at the table. He ducked at the sight of the waving shotgun. “God, Banner, I told you to keep the safety on!”

 

Banner shut the door behind him and leaned the shotgun against it. “And I told you it slips off by itself,” Bruce stated between his teeth.

 

Tony, who sat on the mattress with a small pile of paper in his lap, slid his short pencil behind his ear and held out both hands. “Gimme.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Bruce sighed, handing him the radio.

 

“’63 Chevy?”

 

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know, Tony. Does it matter what kind of truck it is?”

 

“We’re in a life-or-death situation and, once again, it’s up to me to save our asses.” Stark folded his legs Indian-style beneath him. “So yeah, Bruce, if this is the only tech we have that could possibly communicate with the outside world then, yes, every little detail helps.”

 

“Yep, it’s all up to you,” Bruce said only loud enough for Barton to hear. “Our savior…”

 

Steve emerged from the bathroom using the ladder-crutches. He started towards the table but when he saw Barton sitting there, he made a left turn and sat at the foot of the mattress. The force of his sudden weight caused Tony’s papers to jump. Stark cursed under his breath as he gathered the sheets up and used the radio as a paperweight. “TP’s gone,” Rogers announced.

 

Clint slammed the deck of cards down on the table. “There was a quarter of a roll left! Do you do everything super? Super-strength, super-hearing, super-sh—”

 

“Super-annoying is what you are,” Steve hissed. He yanked a piece of paper out from under the radio and Frisbee-ed it across the room. “Put that on a roll!”

 

“Hey!” Tony shouted. “Dammit, Rogers, I don’t want to lose those sketches!”

 

“Sketches?” Banner picked the sheet up. He laid it flat on the table and slid into a barstool across from Barton. “Tony, what the hell? We need you working on communications, not drawing, uh…” Bruce turned the paper upside down, and then another 90 degrees. “What are you working on, anyways?”

 

Tony looked offended. “It’s a low orbit satellite.”

 

“Looks like a fish,” commented Clint.

 

Bruce shifted the angle once more. “And under it is, what? A bird?”

 

“It’s armor.” Tony crawled to the edge of the mattress and made a ‘come here’ motion with his finger. “I have a better version around here somewhere, assuming Cap didn’t use it as a napkin.”

 

Steve’s nostrils flared. “Why would I need a napkin when I haven’t eaten anything in 8 hours?”

 

“I offered you that last can of peaches,” Clint reminded him.

 

Stark ignored them both. “It’s special armor that will be stored in a satellite, ready to deploy at any time, any place on earth.”

 

Banner examined the scale and quickly did the math in his head. “Tony, this suit is massive! Almost Hulk-sized.”

 

“I call it…” Tony paused for dramatic effect… “The Hulk-Buster!” Three pairs of eyes looked at him. “Technology that can, you know, bust the Hulk.”

 

Bruce dropped the paper and massaged his forehead. “Are you kidding me…”

 

“Kidding you about what?” Tony shrugged at Steve, who shrugged back. “Banner, you of all people—literally, of _all_ people—know that we need a way to subdue the Other Guy if he gets out of control again. It’s not like we can just sing a lullaby!”

 

Barton looked back over his shoulder at the pair on the mattress. “Code Green!” he whispered. Clint got off the barstool and hopped over to the kitchen counter. Rain pounded the thick glass window above the sink and completely obscured the view of the front lawn. Clint sat on the counter with a sigh. After reaching into his jeans pocket he realized that he left the playing cards on the table but instead of going back or asking for them, he inched slightly further away. The sprained ankle rested comfortably on a white bucket.

 

“Will it kill us?” Bruce wondered.

 

“No!” Stark hesitated. “Probably not. I—I don’t think it will kill him.”

 

“ _Us_!” Bruce hissed. “I didn’t say ‘him,’ I said ‘us.’” Tony raised his hands as if to protect his face from a gunshot. “Will it kill _me_?”

 

Tony did a darn good impression of a student who didn’t understand the question.

 

“Tony, I don’t care if every scientist, doctor, and engineer on the planet is trying to figure out a way to trap, contain, and kill the Hulk. Hell, I’ve spent years trying to murder us both! I feel the blood on his hands on mine. Every. Single. Day.” Bruce’s voice escalated quickly from a whisper to a shout. “They don’t care what happens to me. _I_ don’t care what happens to me! I don’t care if I die! I don’t expect to be saved but I thought—I assumed…” Bruce cleared his throat. “I hoped you might be the one person capable of saving me. Or at least, as my friend, the one person who would _try_.” Tony’s eyes dropped to his lap. Dirty fingernails scratched at the bandage on the back of his skull.

 

“Calm down, kids,” Steve ordered. “All of our blood sugars are low.”

 

“We’re going to need a lot of therapy when we get home,” Clint groaned.

 

Tony lifted his chin in a defensive stance. “Don’t go to Banner. He’ll fall asleep in five minutes!” he said. “Does that fit your definition of being a friend, Bruce?”

 

“I told you I’m not that kind of doc—”

 

“I didn’t need you to be my doctor!” Tony bellowed. “I needed you to be my _friend_!”

 

Bruce gripped the corner of the table with both hands. “You don’t want friends. You want sidekicks, but mostly you just _want an audience_!”

 

Steve tried to intervene again. “The armor, Bruce, you know he was just trying to help.”

 

“Shut up, Cap,” Tony snapped. “I can fight my own battles.”

 

“He’s ‘just trying to help,’ Stark,” Clint mocked from the kitchen.

 

Steve pivoted towards him. “The last thing I want to hear about right now is your version of helping, Barton. You had no right to put me on the spot—to force me to confront Tony before I was ready!”

 

“What?” asked Stark.

 

Clint folded his arms against his chest and stuck his chin out. “Fine. Maybe I’ll tell Tony the ‘bad news.’ Maybe I’ll also tell him who kept it from him for this long!”

 

Rogers turned beet-read from the neck up. “Don’t even think about it, Barton.”

 

Tony shifted his weight until he sat on the edge of the mattress with his bare feet on the wood floor. “What are you guys talking about?”

 

“Yes sir, Captain.” Clint gave Steve a sarcastic salute. “Oh, wait, that’s right, you’re not even really a captain. You’re not even trained in modern warfare. None of you are! All you could pull out of your cowl this mission was a bayonet charge from the Civil War? And here I am, the most experienced person in the room, taking orders from rookies! Who’s really qualified to lead the Avengers?”

 

“Oh, please,” Bruce snapped. “You’re just a foot soldier, Barton. There are a thousand other guys just like you.”

 

It was Clint’s turn to go red. “You know, before I met you people, I never ended up marooned in a cabin and my best friend never got stabbed by an alien!” The bucket ricocheted off the single table leg when Clint kicked it towards Bruce, who immediately jumped to his feet. “You think I’m expendable? Try finding another assassin with my record!”

 

Steve stood, too. His next words made everyone flinch: “You mean your record of killing innocent people for _HYDRA_?”

 

Clint leapt off the counter as if it had just caught fire. “At least when I was ‘assassinating for HYDRA’ I had the tech and stealth to keep me alive!” Barton hissed back at Steve, but aimed at Tony. “Are we going to talk about what happened at the cave? About what went wrong with your magical machines, Stark? SHIELD would’ve detected 800 aliens waiting to pounce on us!”

 

“I scanned for heat signatures, Robin Hood!” Stark barked. “Damn cold-blooded Chitauri didn’t register! Are you telling me SHIELD would’ve detected what I couldn’t?”

 

“SHIELD is smart enough to spend more than 5 minutes gathering intel on a target but, unlike you, we’re not self-righteous know-it-alls! We would’ve—”

 

“What’s with the ‘we’ talk? There is no more SHIELD!” Steve declared. “Dammit, Barton, it’s hard enough keeping Stark and Thor from going all lone-wolf, now I have to worry about your loyalty?”

 

“Loyalty?” Tony sputtered. He shuffled off the mattress and stood up on shaky feet. “I’m sorry, but while the Helicarriers were falling into the Potomac, were you fighting back or having a playdate with your old friend?”

 

Steve pointed a finger right at Tony’s nose, and only inches away from it. “Don’t start on that, Stark! Leave Bucky out of this!”

 

“Our fearless leader,” Bruce sneered, leaning against the table. “Loyalty. Right. We all know you’d choose that brainwashed assassin over us.”

 

Clint was thinking out loud. “Nat and I would be better off on our own. We’ve survived this long without fancy Stark Industries toys.” He toed the bucket another foot forward.

 

Tony’s voice dropped dangerously low and soft. “SHIELD ‘toys’ are better? What the hell was in that gas you tossed into the cave, Barton? It woke up a whole goddammed army!”

 

“The Avengers are led by a captain who isn’t really a captain and equipped by an egomaniac who thinks he’s invincible just because he’s so damn smart,” Barton said.

 

Tony bristled. “Smarter than you!”

 

“I have people who depend on me, you know? If I’m safer on my own, then that’s where I’ll be! I’ll go right now if I have to!”

 

“You wanna go? Then go!” Tony yelled. “And you know what? I don’t really need any of you. I could build my own army in a week. A whole Iron Legion to protect the world! A whole Hulk-busting legion!”

 

“None of us can save the world by ourselves!” Steve reminded them.

 

“Tell that to Katniss over there! Delusional idiot thinks he can make a difference with a bow and arrow? We’re not hunting mammoths!”

 

Clint shook his head in disgust. “Look at us. We’re not a team. We got lucky with Loki, but the last two missions have been a disaster.”

 

“And whose fault is that?” Steve shouted. “Maybe we would’ve captured Bloom and his men if you and Romanoff hadn’t gone off on your own plan!”

 

“Says the guy who wanted to give up on the whole mission after one hiccup!”

 

“And clearly we should’ve! If we’d extracted you when I said, you wouldn’t have gotten stabbed in the chest and Stark wouldn’t have been blown up!”

 

Bruce spoke up. “None of that would’ve happened if we’d kept the Quinjet close enough to fire back.”

 

“None of that would’ve happened if I’d stayed in the air!” said Stark. “If you listened to me you—you…” Tony’s held his stomach as if someone had just punched it. “You, uh…” He swayed. “Uh oh—”

 

Cap held his hands up for the bucket. “ _Clint_!”

 

Barton underhanded the bucket while Bruce caught Tony under the armpits to keep from landing nose-first on the floor.

 

Steve caught the bucket and slid it in front of Stark.

 

Tony vomited not a second later.

 

Clint braced his arm against the door and bowed his head. “Geeze…”

 

Tony’s stomach paused long enough for him to gasp, “God it hurts—”

 

Bruce reached around Stark and adjusted his sleeveless shirt so that the sick didn’t splash back onto it. Then, when he was sure that Tony was depending on his own knees instead of Bruce’s strength, he rested his forehead against his friend’s spine and sighed.  

 

Steve closed his eyes. His head shook slightly back and forth, back and forth. “That was flawless teamwork, Avengers.”

 

“Hooray,” Tony groaned. “Go team…” His body spasmed once, twice, three times. Everything solid came up, then everything liquid, and then Tony’s stomach just kept convulsing with dry heaves.

 

Steve and Bruce exchanged anxious looks over Tony’s shoulder. “Because of the head wound?” Cap asked.

 

Banner nodded. Tony started coughing, so he gently patted his back. Clint limped over and added his touch to Stark’s shoulder.

 

The worst was over a minute later. The cabin was silent except for Tony’s gasping breaths. Between those gasps he whispered, “Sorry. Sorry, guys. I’m so sorry.”

 

“Nothing you could’ve done to stop that, Tony,” Bruce assured him.

 

Stark shook his head. “No.” He grasped the mattress and looked at Steve’s face. “For what I said. I’m sorry.”

 

Rogers nodded. “Me, too.” He looked at Barton, and then at Banner. “For what I said to all of you.”

 

Clint squeezed Tony’s shoulder tighter and stared down at his own bare feet. “Yeah. Also me.”

 

“And me,” Bruce agreed.  

 

**To Be Continued**


	11. The Weeping Shapeshifter

Clint Barton tried and failed to lift the trap door for a third time. Steve stood in the shed’s doorway with his arms folded and a smirk on his face. “You’re wasting your energy.”

 

A dry laugh erupted from Clint’s throat. “What energy? Did that rabbit leg fill you up?”

 

Steve tossed Barton his crutches and hopped forward. Cautiously, he eased his fingers between the floorboards. Rusty hinges protested, but a moment later the door landed on the floor with a bang and a hot cloud of dust. Beetles scurried up the uneven, lopsided stone steps and spiders retreated down them. Steve heard but didn’t see a hissing snake slither down the tunnel. Rogers motioned for Clint to hand him the gas lamp and then he limped down the stairs. “Tunnel goes southwest!” he reported.

 

Clint crouched on the floor and peered as far as he could into the hole. “Smell that? Moonshiners used this.”

 

Steve nodded. “Bet someone dug this out back in the 20’s during Prohibition. Can’t see where the tunnel ends. We might end up in Ohio.”

 

“At least Ohio has Wi-Fi.” Clint straightened up and pointed his thumb towards the shed door. “Hop back out, Captain. Looks like we have a Plan D.”

 

Steve grunted as he climbed. “How about we call it Plan T? T for ‘tunnel’.”

 

“After Plan R, ‘run for your life,’ and Plan S for ‘suicide’?”

 

Steve chuckled once at the dark joke. “’R’ for ‘rabbit attack.’ ‘S’ is use ‘Stark as human shield’ or—”

 

“S for ‘seduce’?” Clint used his wooden ski crutches to get to the door first and hold it open for the hopping Steve. Morning sunlight greeted them. “I’ve seen Nat use that technique a hundred times but, unfortunately, I don’t have a corset.”  

 

Steve Rogers was a moment away from asking what a corset was when both men heard a **_crack_** and hit the ground.

 

\---------

 

Kentucky heat cooked John Bloom’s ginger hair. Sweat fogged his scope and trickled down over the ‘x’-shaped scar on his cheek. He jumped when a curious robin flew by. “Dammit!” he cursed.

 

“Keep your shit together!” Delancey hissed from behind a tree on his right.

 

“We already lost the neuroscientists! Strucker will kill us if we mess this up, too!” said Jackson.

 

“Oh, you’re dead anyway,” Bloom assured him. “Our entire alien army got vaporized under your watch. You’re lucky Strucker even let you join my team for the cleanup.”

 

“Excuse me, but who came up with this ‘storm the castle’ idea?” 

 

“Delancey.”

 

“Delancey and I! And who came up with the idea to search the woods at night with a stealth drone?”

 

“Doll.”

 

Jackson spat a wad of saliva on the dirt. “Me! Doll wanted to go grid by grid in a hang glider like it’s 1993!”

 

Bloom shrugged. “That SHIELD patrol last night was surveying the area in wingsuits.”

 

“Jackson, relax, you’ll get your kudos,” Delancey said. “Strucker knows we’re doing our part. What you can do now is shut it so Bloom can concentrate!”

 

A third voice said, “Boys, boys, boys. Sneaking up on them is child’s play. The real test of this mission is whether the trap will work and that, thankfully, is all on Strucker.”

 

Jackson looked back over his shoulder at a tall, slim woman in her 50’s whose hair sported an even brighter shade of red than Bloom’s. “Hey, baby Doll, wanna put some dime on Bloom’s shot?”

 

Doll rolled her eyes. “As if you’re good for it. You still owe Clint Barton twenty bucks from a Poker game. Surprised Romanoff didn’t tear your head off when she had the chance.”

 

“Should I pay him back before or after I shoot him?”

 

Bloom finished wiping the moisture off his sniper rifle and returned to the scope. “Get in line, Jackson. I’ve got dibs on Hawkeye.”

 

Jackson punched the tree he crouched behind. “So, we can call dibs now, huh? Fine! Rogers is mine.”

 

“No way, man!” Delancey punched his partner in the arm. His elbow bumped against Bloom’s back and the HYDRA agent almost dropped his rifle.

 

“ _Son of a bitch_!” Bloom turned on his knees and punched them both on the nametags stitched into their camouflaged uniforms. “Back the hell up, will you? You know what? Go join Vizquel at my 3:00. And shut up before the targets hear you!”

 

Doll crawled forward on her knees after Jackson and Delancey left, grumbling through the brush. “Target sighted?” she whispered.

 

Bloom blinked through the scope. “South side of the cabin. Second window from the right. Male. Six feet tall.”

 

Doll flipped her hair back over her shoulder and raised a walkie-talkie. “Alpha team is ready,” she reported.

 

“ _Stand by_ ,” replied a female voice. “ _Northeast window. Male. Unclear if an adult—target is sitting down.”_

Every HYDRA agent flinched when Baron Wolfgang von Strucker spoke through the coms. “ _Polite reminder that we’re no longer associated with SHIELD or its inefficient rules_!” Strucker spat with his accented voice. “ _We’re at war. We have neither the time nor the luxury to hesitate! Begin the assault!_ ”

_“Beta_ _is go_.”

 

“ _Charlie is go_.”

 

“ _Delta is go_.”

 

“On my mark,” Bloom whispered. “Three… Two… One…”

 

Bloom and three other snipers pulled their triggers. Glass splashed. Screams echoed. Bloom grinned when his target took a bullet through the ear. The squad raced forward—literally raced in a spur-of-the-moment competition to see who would kick down the door first. Doll won. She followed her Beretta right into the middle of the cabin and turned in a circle to make sure that every eye in the room was on her. “Good morning, boys!” she cooed. “We’re your nightmare. Not your worst nightmare, but definitely in the top five. Kindly raise your hands above your heads and _shut up_!”

 

A red fleur-de-lis hung over a wide, unused chimney. Fluttering in the sudden breeze, a long cloth banner that hung from one corner of the cabin to another read ‘Boy Scouts of America.’ There were no other decorations except for a plaque, and a frayed maroon rug that took up most of the one-room, classroom-sized structure. And, in the northeast corner of the room, splashed with their scoutmasters’ blood and huddled under a table piled with popsicle sticks, glue guns, string, toothpicks, and six different types of candy bars were a dozen 12-year-old boys wearing forest-green uniforms.

 

“Really? With the crying?” Bloom made a _tut-tut_ noise with his tongue. “When I was in Scouts we behaved like men! I don’t give a damn if you just saw your scoutmaster kick it—quit that noise!”

 

The few boy scouts who weren’t crying immediately started to sob.

 

“Ugh!” Jackson shouted. He unsheathed a second Glock and aimed at the kids. “Zip it, shrimps!” 

 

“So rude,” a new voice purred from the door. Sporting a perfectly pressed uniform and a single monocle clamped in front of his eye, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker strolled into the room with his gloved fingers intertwined behind his back. “These are children, gentlemen! Precious children! Behold the future!” Strucker plopped a hand on top of a chubby blond boy’s head and drummed his fingers. “These lads are special. Chosen! Thanks to them we will soon be free of that Beast and, without their guard dog, the Avengers are no match for HYDRA!”

 

Bloom, Doll, Jackson, and Delancey cheered along with the ten other agents piled into the scouts’ cabin.

 

“Bring in the tech and get to work!” Strucker ordered. “We have a Hulk to catch.”

 

\----------

 

Bruce was unsurprised to find Tony awake and scribbling. “How are you feeling today?” he asked with a forced nonchalant-ness to his voice. “You look slightly less like a corpse.”

 

Tony shrugged. He didn’t look up from the paper. “Corpses don’t have headaches. I envy corpses.”

 

Banner narrowed his eyes. “Dark, man.”

 

Tony didn’t recognize the plate of meat Bruce handed him. “Grilled venison?”

 

“Rabbit.” Bruce sat down on the mattress beside him. With his legs and arms crossed and the cabin wall against his back, it was the most comfortable spot in the room. “Had to be one hundred yards away when Barton threw that knife.”

 

Stark sniffed the food. “A hundred? No way.”

 

Banner pointed at his own eyes. “Saw it. Vouching for it. Incredible…” Bruce looked around the mattress, then the whole room. “Where, uh, where’s the radio?”

 

“Steve’s giving it a proper burial.”

 

“No luck?”

 

“It caught on fire.” Tony took a bite. Both men waited to see if his stomach would let him keep the meat down. “Take a look at that.” Tony slid over a sheet of paper after he successfully swallowed his lunch.

 

“Another sketch?” Bruce wished, not for the first time that day, that he had his glasses.

 

Stark chomped on a bigger slice. “A little project I have in mind. Thought maybe we could, you know, work on it together.”

 

A raised eyebrow. “Together, huh? Is this your version of an apology?”

 

“Maybe.” Tony tongued the food into his left cheek so that he could speak clearly. “I once apologized to Pepper by giving her strawberries.”

 

Bruce chuckled. “She’s allergic to strawberries.”

 

“I didn’t know!” Tony protested. “Or rather I did but, uh, didn’t. Never mind.”

 

“This isn’t your first head injury, is it?” Banner squinted at the paper. “Looks like just another suit.” 

 

“After we build another program.” The inventor’s eyes shined for the first time in days. “A program like JARVIS, but better. Better, and independent. Independent and able to protect the world when we’re, for example, stuck in the woods.” 

 

“Independent?” Bruce reached for the plate and picked up a bite for himself. “You’re talking about artificial intelligence.”

 

“Obviously.” Using a short, dull pencil, Tony flipped over another page and pointed at it. “What do you think?”

 

Banner read Stark’s scribbles. “Ultra…on?”

 

“Ultron. Badass name, right?”

 

Bruce gestured at the next sheet. “And what’s a Vibramag?”

 

“A gauntlet. For Cap.” Tony pointed at his left forearm. “Magnet that only attracts Vibranium. If Steve loses his shield he just has to turn the magnet on and—whoosh—it’ll return to him, Mjolnir-style.”

 

A soft smile passed from Bruce to Tony. “So, this crisis of ours is, what, a little inventing retreat for you?”

 

Stark scratched his greasy hair. “Something’s got to distract me from this headache.”

 

The pair finished the rest of the rabbit. Tony showed Bruce more blueprints: a new Quinjet with JARVIS installed, retroreflective panels for an Iron Man suit, a fire extinguisher installed inside an arrow, a ‘Stark’marine, a device that scans for brain activity in addition to heat signatures, etc. Only an hour went by before Tony started blinking more and pinching his own skin to stay awake. His energy faded faster than either of them preferred. Even as Bruce gently pushed him flat onto the mattress, Tony kept on talking about how sure he was that an extra knife could fit in the hammer’s handle without compromising balance.

 

Bruce nodded along, barely listening, focused only on making sure Tony was comfortable before he passed out. He knelt on one knee, double-checked all the Band-Aids and bandages and then said, softly, “Tony, I’m leaving.”

 

“Because of the absence of deodorant?” Tony crinkled his nose. “None of us have showered but honestly, man, you stink worse than I do.”

 

Banner didn’t feel like laughing. “It’s been days, Tony. We’re in trouble. One of us has to just pick a direction and start walking.”

 

“I can walk,” said Tony.

 

“Not in a straight line.”

 

Tony snorted. He didn’t argue. “Take the shotgun with you.”

 

“You need it here.”

 

“Barton can defend us against rabbits.” Tony rubbed his tired eyes with his fists. “Yeah, well, chop chop! Hurry up already before I die.”

 

Bruce winced. “Not funny.” He stood, then gently placed his hand on Tony’s head. “See you soon.”

 

“Don’t you dare come back without morphine and muffins,” Tony said sleepily.

 

Clint and Steve stood waiting on the front lawn. Cap looked Banner up and down and asked, “Did you tell him?”

 

Bruce shook his head. “Told him I’m going for help. That’s all.”

 

“Uh, Banner,” said Clint, “no shoes?”

 

“Only one pair of boots in that cabin and you’re going to make sure they go on Tony.” Banner wiggled his bare feet. “Does it even matter? Am I going to be in human form for long?” Steve and Clint looked for an answer in the other’s eyes. “Don’t try to deny what you heard, Barton. There’s more than one reason why they call you the ‘Hawk.’”

 

“I thought I heard a gunshot, but it could’ve been a falling rock or a bear stepping on a stick.” Clint sighed. “I’ve been wrong before.”

 

“No,” Bruce chuckled, “you haven’t.”

 

“Bruce, there’s a good chance they’re friendlies,” Steve insisted. “Campers, hikers, hunters—civilians! Sending you to intercept them is just a precaution.”

 

Bruce snorted. “I’m may not be ‘trained,’ guys, but I’m not stupid. If you really thought the person who fired that gun was likely to help us, you would’ve sent up a flare right away.”

 

Silence. Half a minute passed before Clint interrupted the quiet to say, “Good luck, man.”

 

Bruce nodded. “If you hear Hulk roar… Just run. We’ll hold them off as long as we can,” he said. “Look after Tony.”

 

Without another word, Banner walked between his two teammates and disappeared into the woods.

 

\----------

 

Bruce Banner’s mother told the story of the weeping shapeshifter when he was nine or ten. She insisted that it wasn’t meant to scare him but to encourage his skepticism, a necessary trait for any scientist. But, it was the fear that followed him into adulthood. The fear of hearing a crying child outside his window, down a dark alley, or at his front door. The fear of trying to help the weeping baby only to witness it shapeshift into a goblin as soon as he was in range of its fangs. That image sat in the forefront of Bruce’s mind now as he approached another cabin. A cabin with drapes covering every window and a wide open front door. A cabin inhabited by at least one kid—a kid begging for help between sobs.

 

Bruce peeked at the open door from behind a chestnut oak. “WWSRD?” he whispered to himself. “What would Steve Rogers do?”

 

“Is anybody there?” the kid’s voice called. “Hello! Hello? If anyone can hear me—help!”

 

Bruce concluded that Steve would dash in without hesitating (except for a very brief superhero pose in the doorframe to evaluate the threat). Bruce also concluded that he was no Steve Rogers.

 

Bruce cupped his palms around his mouth and called, “Hello? I hear you—can you hear me?”

 

A brief pause, and then the voice responded. “Mister, I need help! I need help, sir, I’m in the cabin!”

 

Banner took a cautious step out from behind the tree. “What’s going on? What happened?”

 

A longer pause. “My friend said some guy robbed a bank, hid the money in here, then never came back for it! He said to climb up the chimney but I fell—I fell and, and hurt my leg!” Pause number three. “I broke my leg!”  

 

Ten more steps. Bruce could see into the building, but not past shadows. “What’s your name, kid?”

 

“Danny! Daniel Christopher Smith-Coblentz. I play basketball! My mom’s a pastor! I got an A- on my last spelling quiz!”

 

Bruce stayed crouched, ready to bolt as he approached. “Danny, is there anyone else in there with you?”

 

“No! I swear, no!”

 

“I’m coming in!” Bruce called. “Danny, I need you to sit perfectly still. Don’t make any sudden moves, kid, ok? I don’t want to hurt you. I won’t hurt you, but I need you to stay still.”

 

“Ok, mister!” the child replied. The tears left his voice but the fear remained. “Hurry!”

 

Banner stepped over the threshold. Hulk hovered beneath his skin, ready to burst out Jack-in-the-Box style.

 

Only part of Bruce was surprised when three things happened simultaneously: overhead lights burst on, the door shut behind him, and hands shoved him forward. Two more pairs of hands caught him, led him to the left a few feet, then disappeared as suddenly as they arrived. Bruce squinted at the bright lights. Silhouettes of figures came into view. “Danny?” he called. “Danny, are you here?”

 

Hiccup-sobs on his left. “I’m sorry, Mr. Banner, but they made me do it. They made me do it!”

 

“It’s all right, kid,” Bruce soothed. To the other dark shapes he said, “If you know who I am, then you know _what_ I am. Believe me when I say you wouldn’t like me when I’m—” Bruce’s eyes adjusted. The scene around him became clear. “…angry,” Bruce said meekly. “Oh, man…”

 

A confident voice with an accent he couldn’t place spoke from his right. “Look down, Doctor. Look down at your feet.” Bruce obeyed. His bare feet stood in the center of a circle drawn on the wood with spray-paint. The circle was half the circumference of Steve’s shield. Bruce saw 12 more circles spaced around him like numbers on a clock face. Those circles were three times bigger and, sitting or lying down in their centers were a dozen trembling, crying, terribly terrified little Boy Scouts bound by rope, gagged with thick cloth, and handcuffed tight. He spotted Danny by his nametag. The kid looked slim with long eyes and thick glasses. A smirking red-headed woman stood behind him with a gun.

 

Bruce Banner summoned all of his courage and glared at the woman. “When I unleash him, the Hulk will smash that gun out of your hand before you can even think about pulling the trigger.”

 

The woman’s smirk widened. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she purred. She seemed about to speak some more but, then, a tall man in a pressed uniform walked past her. She dropped her gaze, then busied herself gagging Danny. The man stopped in front of Banner. The tips of his shoes stood motionless inches from the spray-paint. His head was balding and his jaw looked like it was made of steel. “Do you know who I am, Dr. Bruce Banner?” Bruce shook his head. “Good. You should not. The elders among HYDRA’s ranks have worked hard to remain anonymous, even to those associated with SHIELD. My name is Strucker and I’ll be your doom for the day.”

 

Red speckled the unlit fireplace. Bruce smelled the rust of blood. “If you know who I am,” he repeated, “then you know _what_ I am. Let these innocent children go and maybe I’ll rip off your arms instead of your heads.”

 

“I take your threat very seriously, doctor,” said Strucker. Bruce didn’t like the smug smile on his face. I am well aware that you could level us all within seconds. I’m also aware that no cage can contain you. At least, not for long.” He nodded down at the circle. “No cage… Except mine.”

 

Banner raised both eyebrows. “You call this a cage? Didn’t know HYDRA had a sense of humor. Now, for the last time,” Bruce growled, “let these kids go, or none of you will leave here with beating hearts.”

 

Strucker laughed. It was more than a belly laugh, it was a chortle. Looking at a tall, built African American man standing in the opposite corner, he said, “This is my favorite part, Delancey. I’ve been waiting ages to give this speech but now, wow, now I realize I should’ve practiced it in the mirror.”

 

Green eyes glowed. Bruce squeezed his hands into tight fists. “Final warning. Hulk isn’t just a monster. He knows the difference between an innocent kid and a bad guy. And he’s faster than you can imagine.”

 

The chortle crescendoed into a guffaw. “You’re in the best cage imaginable, Dr. Banner. I’m sorry but I really do deserve a pat on the back for this!” Strucker cracked his fingers and intertwined them on top of his bald head. “That circle you’re standing on? That circle you’re spouting threats from? Would you like to know what happens if you step one single toe outside it, or if one of these younglings exit theirs?”

 

A sensation like running water sent goosebumps down Bruce’s spine. He wished Tony was there…

 

“ ** _BOOM_**!” Strucker yelled the sound effect so loudly that everyone in the room started. The baron twirled in a clockwise circle and shouted “Boom!” when his pointed finger passed a child. “When you stepped on that circle you completed a circuit, Dr. Banner. And if you step off it? If one ounce of your weight shifts? That circuit will beak and the piles of dynamite under these hostages will instantly explode! And, I hope you’re good with kids because you’ll have to convince them to stay still, too! You can stand there—stand there for hours, Bruce, until some miracle happens, or you collapse from exhaustion, or the Hulk grows impatient and murders everyone here.”

 

Bruce tried to maintain his Poker face. He tried. He really did. But he couldn’t stop the blood draining from his face. He couldn’t keep his teeth from grinding or his skin from sweating. His mother warned him—warned him about many things. She warned him that the innocent could be hiding a monster. Bruce pondered the possibility that he was in a different version of his mother’s story. In this universe he was the shapeshifter, and the shapeshifter wanted to protect the innocent but, ironically, changing into the fanged goblin would destroy the weeping child instead. 

 

The HYDRA agents filed out. Strucker left last because he paused to jab Bruce one last time. “We know where your friends are,” he whispered. “By this time tomorrow, Tony Stark’s broken neck will be under my boot.”

 

Strucker turned out the lights when he left. Somehow, the sudden darkness made the situation ten times worse.

 

“Come on, Banner,” Bruce coached himself. “You can do this. You can handle this. Just… Just stall!” Bruce clapped his hands together. “Kids, I’m sorry this happened to you, but I’m an Avenger. An Avenger! We didn’t let New York City die, and we won’t let you down, either. My team will rescue us before you know it.” Bruce nodded, knowing perfectly well that his audience couldn’t see him. “In the meantime, um, do you kids know how to play Twenty Questions?”

 

**To Be Continued**


	12. Rising Action

Steve watched the sun set from the roof of the shed. Evening stars winked down. So much changed during the 70 years he slept, but not the stars. They reminded him that—for better or worse—not everything was temporary.

 

Clint exited the cabin wearing a second long-sleeved flannel and a scarf around his neck. One blood-stained bandana corralled his hair while another protected his nose and mouth. He left his ski-crutches on the porch, turned on his gas lantern, and hopped over. Steve took one last hopeful look around at the dead garden, the quiet sky, and the still trees. He heard neither the sound of an approaching helicopter nor the telltale roar of the Hulk. No flares, no one calling his name, no searchlights—no light except for the stars and a sliver of Moon.

 

Steve felt Clint’s eyes watching him slide down the roof, step carefully onto the hood of the truck, and then climb down to the grass. Certain that his bones had aligned correctly, he’d taken the splint off his broken leg, and now hopped around without it. If Barton thought that was unwise, he at least had the decency not to mention it. “Any chance I can convince you to at least wait until dawn?”

 

Clint tugged the bandana down to his chin. “Bruce has been gone for at least 12 hours, Cap and, yes, no news might be good news but…” Clint shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe the rum runners dug this tunnel straight to a hospital? Or a McDonalds.”

 

“Think I prefer those earthworms we had for lunch.” The pair moved into the shed where the trapdoor lay open. “Thought you were going to wear the boots?” said Steve when he noticed that Clint’s feet were still bare.

 

Clint glanced down at his sprained ankle. “Ankle’s still swelled up. Left the boots by the bed.”

 

Steve frowned. “Barton, you’re about to crawl into a pitch-black underground shaft. At least put some socks on.”

 

Clint cleared his throat. “I left those for Stark, too. Put them on him, actually. He was shivering in his sleep.” Clint squatted, sat, and then, after a calming breath, jumped down the stone steps to the bottom. Light from the lantern only illuminated a few feet ahead. Clint avoided Steve’s eyes when he said, “If you hear a cave-in, don’t come after me. If you hear me yell, grab Tony and run. And if I’m not back by morning, don’t wait for me.”

 

“I’ll be here.” Steve sat on the floor and dangled his legs into the opening. “I’m going to wait right here for you.”

 

Clint gave the captain a look that resembled pity. “Cap, don’t do that to yourself. We have no clue how long this thing is. I could be back in an hour or eight. Go get some rest, man. You watch out for Tony and I’ll handle this.”

 

Cap geared up to argue but decided not to waste the energy. “Hey, um, listen…” Steve scratched the back of his neck and looked at everything else in the shed except for Clint’s face. “Come back, all right?”

 

“Planning on coming back with an army,” said Clint, “hoping to come back with moonshine!”

 

Steve’s Adam’s apple bounced and his nostrils flared. “Just… Just come back.”

 

Clint nodded. “Watch your ass.” Then, he put the lantern’s handle between his teeth and crawled into the darkness.

 

Steve waited until he could no longer hear Clint moving. Then he waited until his dangling foot fell asleep. Then he waited until he heard an owl hoot in the distance. And then he waited for another hour after that.

 

“Son of a bitch.” Cap dropped his dirty face into his even dirtier hands, and sighed.

 

After one more hour, Steve hopped out to the grass where he put weight on his broken leg for the first time. Pins and needles preceded pain. The weak, fragile limb was almost healed. He could feel it. He didn’t need the splint anymore but, regrettably, he’d still have to use crutches. Another 24 hours and he’d be able to limp a bit. Just one more day and he’d at least be mobile…

 

Never had he imagined himself dying of thirst or starvation while stranded in the woods. Before he was a superhero he assumed a disease would end him. Since the serum, he figured he’d die on some battlefield. On his good days, he thought he might die in a comfortable bed with his wife at his side. There would be a dog snoring, blissfully ignorant, in the corner. A summer breeze through the window would carry the laughter of his grandchildren and bathe him in the scent of freshly mown grass…

 

Tony was asleep when Steve entered the dimly lit cabin. Soiled Band-Aids littered the floor. Unfinished letters scattered across the mattress started with “Dear Pepper” and ended in the middle of a sentence. Another sheet of paper immediately caught Steve’s eye. He gently sat on the mattress, tugged the top left corner of the paper out from under Tony’s hand, and read a slightly legible To Do list:

 

_-Add Steve to secure server for emergency messages—retinal scan?_

_-Talk to Pep + board about $ for big messes call it ~~Sorry~~ ~~the~~ ~~Avengers~~ ~~Suck~~ Stark Relief Foundation _

_-Ask Bruce look in truck any oil gas left rig bomb, Molotov cocktails protect cabin_

_-Tower game room maybe Steve likes Ping-Pong_

_-Tower gym— punching bags made of…? _

_-Cap teach us throw shield_

_-Clint teach us shoot arrows_

_-Nat teach us throw knives_

_-Subcutaneous trackers for ~~Avengers~~ EVERYBODY _

_-Thor’s cape shrink in washing machine?_

_- Waffles—gluten-free  _

_-Kid found in Triskelion ( ~~Caleb~~ ~~Carl~~ ~~Calvin~~ Cameron) pay med bills? Home now? _

_-Rendezvous point if separated—shawarma joint_

_-It’s a helicopter but it’s self-driving and seat is suit_

_-Submarine + Stark = Starkmarine_

_-Tower laundry shoot that doubles as escape chute…?_

_-Upstate NY storage = Avengers beta site? Tower too exposed_

_-Send ty fruit basket Dr. Cho + research—if build skin cells if build organs can build body maybe rebuild limbs is her idea like Extremis?_

_-Selvig mental breakdown post-scepter but not Clint—why?_

_-Extra 42’s—layered? Layered like those Russian doll things—send suit to Nat but another under it and under that etc. 1 size fits all? Stretch fit Thor if hurt?_

_- HOW HEAL BRUCE??? Radiation-hypnosis-drugs- ~~placebo~~ -Asgard cure? _

_-Should Rhodey have room in tower—Wilson? closet_

_-Superhero insurance…? Put all on health plan_

_-Maria Hill bonus ~~X2~~ X5 _

_-Crosscheck: known Enhanced vs. missing persons database—location overlap_

_-Chitauri black goo stuff gross wtf?_

_-Arrows for Clint… Heat seeking? Hot tar? Maple syrup? INVISIBLE ARROWS_

_-Next Quinjet CUP HOLDERS _

_-Reconfigure Tower security system b/c Barton in vents???_

_-Party after find scepter—big party epic  _

_-Check MIT projects no funds for supervillains_

_-BLOOD TYPES have extras in Tower @ all times_

_-Iron Legion not soldiers but protect civilians during battle_

_-Tax forms—are they my dependents_

_-Hulk pants PRIORITY_

_-Smithsonian exhibit a/b Cap—need funding? Did S return uniform or keep? Barnes’ info still there or removed b/c reveal Winter Soldier make sure keep_

_-Cancel meeting with Trump CANCEL EVERYTHING TRUMP OUTLAW THAT WORD TOO_

_-That yogurt Nat likes?_

_-Charity donation to Kentucky parks caves something preservation with apology note_

 

The final entries made Steve smile:

 

_-Steve’s apt still bugged/boobytrapped? Scan & go—does he need clothes? _

_-Un-Brainwash B. Barnes—ask neuroscientists—Asgard cure?_

_-Visit Aunt Peggy—daffodils + chocolate covered cherries + bubblegum cigarettes + tell that story about Dad’s foot stuck in the toilet _

 

Water plopped onto Peggy’s name and smeared the pencil marks. Steve almost looked up at the ceiling for a leak. Emotions weighed down his chest and clogged his throat. He didn’t hear himself make a sound but he must have, because Tony gasped. Steve dropped the paper and whiplashed his head to the left to keep Tony from seeing his tears.

 

“Steve,” Tony grunted.

 

Cap cleared his throat twice. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

 

“Not Steve,” Tony whispered, “not him.”

 

Steve turned back. “Tony?”

 

Stark squirmed in his sleep. “…on fire, trapped,” he whispered. That whisper morphed into a panicked cry. “Do better… I’ll do _more_ … _I’ll save you_!”

 

Steve clasped Tony’s shoulders. “Hey, hey! You’re dreaming, Stark!” The sound of Steve’s voice and the strength of his grasp was meant to comfort Tony. Instead, the sleeping man woke up swinging like he was being attacked. Cap blocked the first punch. He caught the second gently, but firmly, and spoke right in his friend’s ear. “ _Tony_!”

 

Tony’s eyes flashed open wild and wide and he sat up so quickly that his forehead nearly headbutted Steve’s. “I saw—” he whimpered, “I saw—wormhole, fire, where’s…?” Brown eyes looked at Steve, but also past him. “Bruce, where’s Bruce, is he back yet, where’s Clint, Steve, where are we they’re following us to I don’t know what-to-do-to-help-how—”

 

The last of their water reserves filled a cup at Tony’s bedside. Steve picked it up and splashed it across his friend’s face. Tony spat a mouthful right back at him. “Better?” Steve whispered. He expected the sheepish Stark to immediately blow off the event and crack a self-deprecating joke. He expected red cheeks and a mumbled apology to which he would respond that it was all right, he had nightmares sometimes, too. He expected Tony’s breaths to slow down, not speed up into frantic gasps.

 

“Oh, god,” Tony wheezed, “not again, not now!”  Tony scrambled away from Steve—back into the furthest corner of the mattress. “I just, I can’t, just need some room, Cap…” Sweat slid down Tony’s temples and moistened his lips. “Dammit, one thought about that wormhole and this—this happens—happens so fast!” Tony pushed his nose into the mattress, between his knees, and pounded his fist. “Over in a sec,” he assured Steve. “Just have to—catch my—breath—It’s hot in here, right?”

 

Steve stood and backed away with his palms held up in surrender. Such symptoms weren’t uncommon during the War. He’d witnessed traumatized soldiers suffering anxiety attacks on several occasions, so he at least knew what _not_ to do. “Tony, you’re safe,” he said like he was talking to a scared child. “Take deep breaths. This will pass in a minute.”

 

Tony straightened. His wet brow left a small stain on the cushion. “Swear this is rare,” he insisted. “Swear it. Once in a while. Just once in a while, ok? Something triggers me and my heart starts racing and it just feels like I’m sinking in quicksand and falling from a cliff at the same time…” He huffed and puffed. Breathing became slightly easier after he only inhaled through his mouth and only exhaled through his nose. “One of those last straws and suddenly, it’s like all the bad stuff I’ve experienced in my life happened all in one day—all in the last five minutes! I—I can’t—”

 

“Shhh.” Steve approached slowly. He wasn’t sure if Tony was the type who needed a hug or to be left alone. Did he need space or did he need human contact?

 

Tony suddenly reached blindly for Steve’s arm and clung to it. “Almost out of my system…” Tony bit down on his bottom lip, and then the insides of his cheeks. “Under control… I got it…” Tony slumped a few inches. His chest deflated like a balloon. “God, this is embarrassing…”

 

Steve sat back down. “Just breathe,” he said. When Stark seemed more coherent, nearly five minutes later, Steve asked, “How long have you had panic attacks?”

 

“Since New York,” Tony whispered. “Meant to tell you. I was going to tell the team, I was. Can’t have a breakdown in the field. Can’t let that put you guys in danger…” Stark’s hand returned to his chest as if his heart had skipped a beat. “Man, just the thought of that, wow…” His pulse went into overdrive once more, and it took another five minutes for Tony to calm down again.

 

Steve felt helpless watching his friend suffer with nothing to punch, no pills to fix it, little to do but wait it out. “It’s ok,” he repeated over and over. “It’s ok, Tony. It’ll be ok.”

 

“Steve, hey, did you hear something?” Tony coughed against his fist. “Just now. Like a whistle,” Tony said, “a high-pitched whistle. You didn’t hear it?”

 

Bruce had warned Cap that Tony’s condition could degenerate into hallucinations. “Just an aftereffect, Tony.” Steve put his face in his hands and sighed. The adrenaline spikes and nutritional deficiencies were starting to catch up to him. Dizziness, fatigue, irritability, weakness, impatience… Hopelessness. Bruce was gone. Clint was gone. Tony was deteriorating by the hour. If he fell into a coma he’d never wake up…

 

“A whistle like, ‘ _yoo hoo_ ,’ you know?”

 

Steve glanced up at Stark who was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes like a drowsy child. Then, he stared at his fist as if he’d never seen it before. “What?” Steve softly prompted.

 

“Nothing, it’s just, um…” Tony flexed all ten fingers. “That pins and needles sensation like when your foot falls asleep is in my—” Stark suddenly looked at the roof, then out the window. “A whistle, I swear. Cap, did you hear it this time? Cap?”

 

A pricking sensation like insect legs skittered up the back of Steve’s neck. Half a minute passed before he was sure, 100% sure that yes, he heard something. A ghostly voice followed another whistle. “Shadow,” the voice called, “come here, boy!”

 

A female voice followed the male’s. “Shadow, baby! You want a treat? Mama’s got a treat for you!”

 

Steve and Tony rose to their knees on the mattress and peeked out the window. They ducked when twin lights soared past the glass.  

 

“Lights off, boots on!” Steve ordered. “ _Stay down_!” Steve expected Tony to be too tired to argue, but to still argue nonetheless. He was pleasantly surprised (and slightly concerned) when Tony nodded in agreement. Steve limped to the door. “They aren’t wearing uniforms,” Cap said, “and those flashlights aren’t standard issue anywhere. Still, could be a trick. They don’t look like HYDRA but that doesn’t mean they aren’t.”

 

“Steve,” Tony whispered, “what we have here is two people out looking for their pet dog or cat or badger or whatever backwater Kentuckians keep as pets.”

 

The man called out, “Shadow!” and then whistled even louder. They were getting closer.

 

“They probably have phones,” Tony insisted. “Maybe they have food.”

 

“The door’s closed! He wouldn’t even be able to get into that cabin,” the woman said to the man.

 

“He might have found a way in if he got cold or something.” Steve and Tony heard creaking footsteps on the front porch. Steve armed himself with a handsaw. Knuckles knocked hesitantly against the door. “Hello?” the man called. “Thought I saw a light in the window a few minutes ago.”

 

She joined him on the creaking wooden planks. “Is anyone in there? Hello? Look, sorry, really sorry but we’re looking for our beagle! Maybe you’ve seen him? Hello?”

 

Steve picked the shotgun up and tiptoed into position beside the door. He told Tony to stay quiet by pressing his forefinger against his lips and hissing “shhh.” Stark finished slipping the too-big boots on and took a rusty fork out from under his pillow. He stood in a ready stance—knees bent, arms up, fork held like sword. The couple outside spoke and knocked a few more times, and then they slowly opened the door.

 

A body crashed fists-first through the window and tackled Tony to the ground.

 

\----------

 

The bottle of wine was a gift from his mother. Thor meant to drink it when she died, but decided it would be disrespectful. Now, as he stood on a golden balcony above Asgard’s grand waterfall and mourned his dead friends, he knew what they would want for him. He opened the bottle with his teeth, spat the cork into the water, and drank the wine like a shot of vodka.

 

“Thor?” a familiar voice called from behind him. “Will you not speak to me?”

 

Thor burped so loudly that the sound echoed. “Have I not made it clear that I intend to speak to no one while I am in mourning?” 

 

“It has been days. Several.” Heimdall walked up behind him. “I only wish to know why you are mourning. It is not obligatory that you tell me, my friend, but your father always says it is best not to mourn alone.” Thor’s shoulders slumped. He didn’t order the guard away, so Heimdall approached on his left side. “Because of your request I keep my sight on Jane Foster. I know she lives, but is she not well?”

 

A smile briefly lit Thor’s pale face. “Jane is as lovely as ever.” The smile faded quickly.

 

“Your friend Selvig, then? Or the maiden Darcy? Are they ill?”

 

Thor let the empty bottle fall from his hands and drown in the water. “My friends and I were scouring the earth for Loki’s scepter. There was a fierce battle. We were outnumbered. I—I had no choice but to strike with the hammer but in doing that, I doomed them. They died in fire.”

 

Heimdall cocked his head to the side. Sunlight sparkled off his golden armor. “Certainly, you do not speak of your Avenger friends?”

 

“The Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, she survived and is being tended to. She and I were the only survivors of the 6…” Thor braced his hands against the gold-trimmed railing and bowed his head. “There was nothing left of the others.”

 

“The blue-clothed man with the round shield? The frowning arrow wielder? The green giant and the flying, fire-breathing metal man?”

 

“Indeed.” Thor put his forehead on the railing and let a tear slide off the tip of his nose. “I failed. I failed them, and I failed Midgard.”

 

Suddenly, Heimdall gripped Thor’s elbow. “Thor, I know not what you witnessed, but as you know I have the ability to see every soul on Earth! Brother, friend, I assure you— _I swear to you, Thor_ —those four mortals’ hearts beat as we speak!”

 

Thor whipped his head up so fast that he gave himself a sore neck. He searched Heimdall’s face for the slightest trace of a lie and, when he found none, immediately gasped, “They live?” Heimdall nodded. Thor took two deep breaths. He raised his hand and Mjolnir sailed to him. The hammer vibrated, radiated in his hand as if it, too, was relieved at the news. “ _Where are they_?”

 

**To Be Continued**


	13. The Cavalry

From the floor, Tony watched the scene as if through the wrong side of a pair of binoculars. Forms thundered into the cabin. Steve lost the shotgun when the door swung right into his broken leg. Cap crumpled, but kept kicking. More than one figure in black camo stayed down once Steve put them there. Tony crawled out from under the cheap grandfather clock, taking glass shards with him. A foot away from the gas stove (and the box of matches on top of it), he froze, crippled, when a boot as big and heavy as a bowling ball slammed down on his spine. The subsequent moments were a blur. Rough hands dragged him out of the cabin by his neck. Rougher hands pulled Steve. The HYDRA thugs set the two Avengers on their knees in the yard. Tony alternated between the sensation that he was about to vomit and the equally lousy sensation that he was about to pass out. He swayed. The grass was a foot from his nose but strong arms prevented him from landing in it. Steve forced Tony back up onto his knees, and held him there. Blood trickled from the super soldier’s super-smashed nose and busted lip. Tony tried to tell Steve that he lost the matches—that their plan to blow up the cabin was gone. He spoke, but his words didn’t make sense to his own ears. His voice was all vowels.

 

Steve braced his hand against Stark’s spine, anchoring him. “Stay behind me,” he whispered. Tony snickered. They were both wounded and surrounded by eight HYDRA agents with guns. They weren’t going anywhere. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were on their knees in the lonely woods, about to be executed. Executed, apparently, by Barton’s old friend, John Bloom. The ginger-haired agent took his ski mask off with a flourish. He grinned like a shark eager for dinner. “Hard to kill, aren’t you? Like cockroaches. But here you are under a very large boot. All that money, all that magical serum and yet, here you are. At the end of the day you’re just two men incapable of stopping our army.”

 

Movement behind the agents, beyond the tree line caught Tony’s eye. He saw red and silver in his peripheral vision. The pace of his heartbeats doubled. Adrenaline spiked. Steve must have seen the figure at the same time because his fingers pressed harder into Tony’s back. Tony didn’t have to read Steve’s mind to know what he was thinking. Finally, for the first time in days, they had a card to play.   


A ninth figure passed Bloom and entered the circle. The pressed dark uniform, jutting chin, and arrogant posture reminded Tony of an SS guard. “Wolfgang von Strucker,” said the man. “ _Baron_ Wolfgang von Strucker.”

 

Tony found his voice and with it, his wit. “So, I should call you ‘Lord’ douchebag instead of just ‘douchebag’?”

 

The baron cocked his head to the side and blinked. “I like my enemies to know my name and see my face before I kill them. Makes the whole affair more… Intimate.”

 

“Not creepy at all,” Tony muttered. “You know what I like to do when my enemies are unarmed and injured and surrendering? Give them a glass of water, a sugar cookie, a high-five, and then send them on home.”

 

Steve piled on. “He has a point. Wouldn’t be much fun killing us like this. Why not wait until we’re more evenly matched? Or on television?”

 

“Or, better yet, tell us your dastardly plan—”

 

“In detail!”

 

“In detail,” Tony agreed. “Tell us your dastardly plan in detail and _then_ let us go.” 

 

“Still with snacks, though, right?” said Steve.

 

“Of course, with snacks.” Tony held his hands out in a pleading gesture.

 

Strucker’s expression was a marble statue. Silver moonlight reflected off his monocle. “What’s our dastardly plan? World domination. What are the details?” Stray twigs and acorns crunched under his boots when he approached the pair of Avengers and glared down at them. Tony ordered himself not to cower under Strucker’s frown. Chin high, chest out, hands braced against his thighs, he stared right back. The corners of Strucker’s mouth twitched in amusement. “I honestly do not know. That, gentlemen, is why HYDRA is so effective. No one man controls everything. There are cells out there taking different paths towards the same goal. You decapitated the head of Project Insight, Captain, but that was only one head of _hundreds_.”

 

“We’ll chop off those heads one at a time,” Cap declared. “We’ll decimate them until they can’t grow back.”

 

Strucker laughed. The entire circle of operatives joined in. “Do you know what history will call the Avengers?” Strucker asked. “Not heroes. Certainly not ‘super’ heroes. A hundred years from now you’ll only be known as _clowns_.”

 

“And what will history call HYDRA?” Steve asked.

 

A sly smile from Strucker. “ _Saviors_.”

 

Strucker’s voice sounded further and further away to Tony, but he was still coherent enough to understand it. He rolled his eyes. “Oh, _please_ —” Strucker backhanded him across the jaw. Sparks and stars exploded. Tony teetered and only remained upright only because Steve kept him there.

 

“We will save humanity from itself,” Strucker insisted. “Through political domination. With miracles of science. By blessing mankind with _order_.”

 

“Order?” Steve shook his head twice. “Global fascism isn’t about order. It’s about control.”

 

Strucker didn’t disagree. “Control is the opposite of chaos. Do you know what it gives people?” he asked. “Safety. Security. Predictability. Comfort. Most men would give up anything to be safe behind an impenetrable wall.”

 

“Freedom—” Steve began.

 

Strucker surged forward into their personal space. Glaring down at them, red-faced, he declared, “Freedom is an empty word—an illusion! A positive twist on chaos, but chaos nonetheless.” Strucker suddenly unsheathed a gun and cocked it. “Tell you what…I’ll give one last taste of freedom. You, Captain, are free to choose which vital organ I shoot!”

 

Cap gulped. “Waffles.”

 

“Wrong word,” Tony whispered.

 

“ _Pancakes_!” Steve shoved Tony to the grass and shielded his body as a blast of horizontal lightning surged from the forest and blew up the cabin. Fiery debris erupted like confetti and rained down on the HYDRA agents. Tony didn’t see Thor emerge from the trees but, barely half a moment before he passed out, he felt thick Asgardian arms scoop him up.

 

\---------

 

Clint couldn’t tell if his lantern was fading because the gas was nearly spent, or because there wasn’t enough oxygen in the narrow, underground tunnel. Correction: tunnel _s_. Hawkeye lay on his stomach at a fork in the road. One tunnel continued straight, one went left, and the third went right. No noise, no scent, no breeze distinguished one from the other. He was a sniper, trained to linger in one place for as long as he needed to. On one of his first missions for SHIELD he spent 14 hours pretending to be a manakin in a shop window to get close enough to assassinate a terrorist. But this wasn’t a stakeout. This was a race against the clock. Hesitating could get him and his teammates killed, and he’d already paused in that fork for a full three minutes.

 

“Move,” he whispered to himself. “Keep moving, Barton.” Clint chose the tunnel on his right and resumed crawling. The tunnel tapered. And the light lasted only 20 more minutes.

 

Clint collapsed facedown. His ankle throbbed. Wisps of smoke made his eyes water. The borrowed jeans were too big and the borrowed shirt was too small. Dirt turned his sweat into mud, and his entire back burned when the salt leaked into his wounds. “Move,” Clint whispered in the darkness. “Laura’s at the end of this tunnel. And Nat. And mushroom pizza and puppies and the cure for cancer.” Clint dug black fingernails into the ground and fought his way back up onto his knees. “ _Keep moving! **Keep moving**_!”

 

Barton wasn’t sure how much time had passed, exactly, but he counted to 1,000 twice and hummed the entire ‘ _Frozen’_ soundtrack three times (it was his daughter’s favorite movie). And then—miraculously—he saw light. Clint muscled his way through a coil of roots and emerged, gasping, beside a crooked beech tree. Half his weight in dirt shook off him when he stood up, swaying, grasping at tree limbs to keep his balance.

 

He stood in a clearing illuminated by the silver moon. In the center of the clearing stood a large cabin. And strolling around that cabin came a pair of HYDRA soldiers.

 

“Oh, come on,” Clint sighed.

 

The soldiers froze at the sight of the dirt-covered Avenger swiping a scarf off his neck and a bandana out of his hair. They shared a shocked look, and it was that brief hesitation that doomed them.

 

Clint charged forward before they raised their guns. Muscled arms clotheslined the nameless soldiers’ throats. Both skulls slammed into and shattered a cabin window. Barton wheeled his fists and elbows, lightning-fast—so fast that neither agent got a single punch in. A moment later they both landed, unconscious, against the beech tree. Barton stumbled backwards—and nearly through the broken window. Twisting, bracing his arms against the walls, he found himself leaning half-in, half-out of the cabin and felt shocked—beyond shocked—when a familiar voice said his name.

 

\----------

 

The size of the spray-painted circle beneath Bruce’s bare feet was wide enough for him to stand in, but too narrow to sit Indian-style, or to kneel. Crouching like a catcher in a baseball game worked for only so long before his knees got tired. And even if he could Hulk-out without instantly setting off the explosives, they would still go off because the Other Guy’s feet would cross the barrier by a toe and a half. So, Bruce stood. Stood for what felt like forever. Stood and listened to the cabin full of Boy Scouts cry and ask for their mothers and wonder why no one had rescued them yet. Bruce Banner was no babysitter but, sometimes, he could distract them. He told the boys about Tony Stark’s expensive cars, about the countries he’d visited, and what Captain America was like in ‘real life.’ He facilitated a lengthy debate about who would win in a fight between the Hulk and Thor (Hulk won by 2 votes). And, especially when one of the boys woke up and forgot where he was and what was going on, Banner asked about his science classes and corrected everything the teachers got wrong. They were true troopers. Bruce worried that one or more would freak out and run, killing them all. But, they stayed in their circles. They slept when they could. And only twice did they whine about bathroom breaks and hunger.

 

Blessed / cursed with an accurate internal clock (at least in his human form), Bruce knew when an hour had passed, then two, then five, and then 12. Time continued after that but his brain could no longer keep up. Locked knees trembled. Swollen feet throbbed. His lower back ached. He slumped forward at the shoulders like a hunchback. Every few minutes he doubted he could stand for a few minutes more. It was inevitable, he knew, that his body would betray him. His knees would buckle, or he’d pass out, or he’d simply fall asleep standing up and teeter over on accident.

 

There was no way around that. None. They were all going to die.

 

It never occurred to Bruce that this Strucker guy left guards behind until two skulls slammed through the window at his 10:00 position. Half of the kids stayed asleep during the commotion but the other half screamed. Minutes passed before the ruckus outside silenced. A third person emerged. Dazed, stumbling, and covered in dirt, the newcomer staggered against the cabin and looked inside.

 

Bruce’s stomach soared. “Barton?”

 

Clint’s bloodshot eyes blinked at him. “Banner?”

 

The rest of the kids stirred. “Wake up!” one Boy Scout shouted. “Captain America’s here to save us!”

 

“Uh…” Clint shook the remaining dust and dirt out of his brown hair. “Yeah, sure, insert patriotic sentiment here… Bruce, what the hell is going on?”

 

Banner’s knees and ankles were numb. He summarized the situation. “Shit,” Clint sighed when he heard the story. “Let me get this straight: you take one step outside that circle and this whole place goes up? This Strucker son of a bitch created the perfect Hulk-cage.”

 

“Watch your mouth around the kids, Barton,” Bruce hissed.

 

Dust blasted from Clint’s nose when he snorted. “Pretty sure they’ve been traumatized worse than that, Doc.”

 

Banner looked down at his shaking knees. “Clint, seriously, I don’t think I can stand up much longer.”

 

“Right.” Clint clapped his hands together twice. “Fair warning: the last time I tried to dismantle a bomb it—”

 

“—worked perfectly and everyone lived happily ever after?” Bruce nodded his chin at the terrified Boy Scouts. “That’s exactly what happened. Right, Hawkeye?”

 

Clint forced a smile. “Absolutely. Awesome.” He held two thumbs up. “Disarming that thing is not step one in this situation, though. All I’m going to do for now is interrupt the proximity and weight sensors under your feet. We’ll get the kids out of here and then come back for the bomb.”

 

Bruce nodded. “Hurry.”

 

Clint gave him a lazy salute. “I’ll just go crawl under this old cabin. Haven’t crawled enough today. Behave, kids. Nobody sneeze. I’ll be right back.” Clint disarmed the unconscious HYDRA soldiers and tied their wrists to the beech tree roots with his long-sleeved shirt. Then he flipped his t-shirt inside out and wiped off his face with the ‘clean’ side. Blinking away stray dust and wishing that the sun was up instead of the moon, Clint lay flat on his chest and crawled under the cabin. The space was narrow—barely taller than the archer was wide. He wiggled and kicked his heel to move himself to the exact spot beneath Banner.

 

There was nothing there.

 

Confused, Clint pivoted his head in a circle, his strained eyes looking for any sign of metal or wires and his ears listening for a telltale hum or beep. “Bruce?” Barton cupped his hands around his mouth and called louder, “Bruce!”

 

“I hear you,” came Banner’s faint response down through the wooden floorboards. “How’s it going down there?”

 

“Uh…” Clint rapped his knuckles against every square inch of wood but heard nothing hollow. “I’m working on it, buddy.” Clint pushed himself up onto his elbows and knees and quickly combed through the rest of the cabin’s underbelly. There was nothing, _nothing_ that even remotely resembled a bomb. Nothing more dangerous than a spider. Clint hopped around the entire cabin, and then the entire clearing but the only trace of HYDRA beyond the unconscious thugs was a half-empty can of spray-paint.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Barton muttered. “This is going to make Bruce very, very angry…” He limped to the front door. It wasn’t even locked. The Boy Scouts jumped to their feet when he barged in. “It’s ok, kids. It’s all over. You’re safe now.”

 

Banner stared at him with wide eyes and tall eyebrows. His entire body trembled from the stress of standing up so still and so straight for so long. “You’re sure?” Bruce gulped.

 

Barton realized then that this was another one of those situations where it was better if his teammate didn’t know the truth. Especially when the truth could bring out a gigantic green nuke. “You owe me one, big buy.” He waved a knife. “I severed the wires _and_ shut down the bomb in record time. No need to thank me.”

 

Banner swayed. “100% sure?” he whispered.

 

Clint nodded and, just to prove it, he limped onto the cabin floor himself and said, with a magician’s panache, “Ta da!” The kids cheered.

 

With a groan that was half relief, half pain, Bruce collapsed to his knees. Barton slid his arms beneath his teammate just in time to prevent him from breaking his own nose. Banner stayed limp and mute and didn’t even twitch when Clint gently arranged his body, pale cheek against the floor.

 

White-hot light suddenly flooded the room from all sides. Barton reached for a bow and arrows he didn’t have in a quiver he wasn’t wearing. His ankle had swelled up in the past half-day and the pain threatened his focus. All he had was one knife to defend Bruce and the boys. Whoever or whatever was behind the light would have to get to them through him. He stood.

 

So sudden was the light that it took Clint’s senses a few extra seconds to notice the noise. The familiar sound of jet engines was as welcome as a glass of cold water. When weapons didn’t rain down, and the agents rushing in didn’t fire their Berettas, Clint accepted that whoever manned the hovering plane was a friendly, and finally allowed himself to relax. He slumped back down on his knees beside Bruce. “’s over, buddy,” he slurred, patting his teammate’s heaving shoulders. “Cavalry’s here.” Barton sighed and shaded his eyes with one dirty hand. “Fury?” he called. “Natasha?”

 

The silhouette of a man in a disheveled suit and tie walked through the light towards Clint. He leaned over, grasped Clint’s upper arm, and squeezed it, tight. In that moment, and more than once in the days and weeks that followed, Clint couldn’t believe who he was seeing. His ex-commanding officer died at Loki’s hand—skewered by the same scepter the Avengers were trying to track down. Mouth dry, chin trembling, eyes filling, Clint whispered, “Coulson?”

 

Phil Coulson smiled back at his old friend and said, “I’m glad to see you alive, too.” Someone spoke to Coulson and he replied, “Take Dr. Banner to the jet. We’ll rendezvous with Fury and Romanoff in Yellowknife.”

 

Clint poked the inside of Coulson’s elbow and mumbled, “Don’t understand…”

 

“Asgard.” Phil released his grip on Clint’s arm and grasped his shoulders. “Heimdall saw that you were still alive and Thor immediately contacted Fury, who deployed my team. Thor should’ve already extracted Stark and Rogers.” Phil shook his head. “Thought you were dead. We all did.”

 

“Thought you were dead. You _were_ dead.”

 

“Yep. Sure was.” Phil stood and helped Clint up, pulling the younger man’s arm across his shoulders. “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”

 

“And how would you have told me without causing a heart attack? In what scenario would I not be shocked?”

 

“I, well, I guess I haven’t put much thought into it,” Phil stammered. “There would probably be cake.”

 

“Cake?” The pair limped out the door behind a gaggle of Boy Scouts shepherded by Coulson’s men. “ _Cake_?” Clint sputtered.

 

“Yeah. Cake. Maybe in the shape of a tombstone.” Coulson stopped and looked up.

 

Clint looked skyward, too. Banner and half a dozen agents ascended towards the jet in a glorified bucket. It dropped them off, then swung back down. Coulson continued describing his plan. “My name would be in frosting with a date of birth but no date of death. How’s that sound?”

 

“Will there be coconut in the cake?” Clint asked.

 

“Of course not,” Coulson scowled.

 

Clint squeezed Phil’s shoulder partly to confirm that he really was there, and partly because that was all the strength he had for a hug. “Then I’m happy.”

 

**To Be Continued**


	14. The TOP Top Secret

 

Shouting people yanked Clint out of Coulson’s arms and pushed him onto a stretcher. Phil jogged behind and followed them into a small, bright room in the jet’s torso. While the med team got to work, Phil stepped into the corner to answer his vibrating phone. “Sit rep,” he demanded.

 

“Thor got them,” Melinda May replied. “He’s on his way.”

 

“They’re alive?”

 

“It’s bad, Phil.”

 

“ _Are they alive_?”

 

“They’re alive.”

 

“Thank God.” Phil sagged against the wall. “Prisoners?”

 

“Thor’s going to head back into the woods after he drops them off.”

 

“Banner?”

 

“Seems to be asleep. Just asleep.”

 

Phil nodded as if he and May were face to face. “Update me in 20. Get us to the safehouse in an hour.”

 

“Phil—”

 

“I know, I know.” Coulson squeezed his eyes shut tight enough to block out all light. “Just… Just hurry.”

 

Scissors cut around Clint’s blood-stained, dirt-covered flannel, scarf, bandannas, and jeans. Phil cringed and looked away at the sight of the cuts, contusions, and semi-healed burns. He could see that Barton’s ankle was sprained, or worse, and swollen to twice the normal size. Clint cried out a curse when the nurses rolled him onto his side and examined the massive slash that crisscrossed his back from his right hip up to his left shoulder. Green pus that smelled like cheese dipped in sulfur bubbled up from a chasm of hot, red skin barely connected by green dental floss. Phil muscled his way past the med team. He and Clint reached for each other’s hands at the same time. Both held on tight.

 

“A hundred,” Clint said softly.

 

“What?”

 

“That’s how many questions I have. A hundred… At least a hundred.”

 

“I have a few for you, too.” Phil scooted closer to Barton’s head so that a nurse could insert IVs. “Fury tells me you spoke at my memorial service.”

 

“Uh…” Clint’s eyes looked everywhere but at Phil’s. “Yeah, but, um, Natasha wrote most of my speech.” A doctor said something about infected wounds and a fever. Another estimated how many stitches Clint needed. A third went rummaging through a drawer for antibiotics.

 

“Did she write that bit about how I’d rather die young than go bald?”

 

“That was, uh, a collaboration.” Puppy dog eyes blinked up at Coulson. “I said good things, too!”

 

Phil smiled. “I didn’t say that was bad. I’m not even saying it was inaccurate.” The pair shared a chuckle when Coulson dragged short fingernails through his brown hair.

 

A doctor with dark eyes and even darker long hair leaned over. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked.

 

“Don’t know.” Clint shrugged. “Don’t even know what day it is. Is it a Tuesday? Feels kind of like a Tuesday.”

 

“It’s Friday, Agent Barton. Water?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“When did you last drink any water?”

 

Clint licked dry, cracked lips. “Now that you mention it, I’d kill for a root beer float. I’ve been craving once since we took down that satellite.”

 

Phil shared a surprised look with the medical staff. “So that was you. We were trying to piggyback a signal off Insight for weeks and then it just disappeared from radar.”

 

“Yep. That was me. Not Tony and certainly not Thor. All me.”

 

Phil crouched so that Clint could meet his eyes without stretching his neck. “When you went missing my team immediately hacked into Stark’s network looking for clues. Your Quinjet had automatically downloaded terabytes of information and we decrypted maybe 10% of the new data. Looked like a map. Was that from Project Insight?”

 

Clint nodded, then flinched when one nurse scrubbed the dirt off his back and another sprayed his skin with chemicals that stung like acid. “Every dot on that map is a HYDRA site. That’s why we were in Kentucky. We must take out those sites, Coulson. Every single one.”

 

Phil sighed. “Kentucky. That’s about all Romanoff could remember.”

 

“Natasha… Is Nat ok?”

 

“Fury told me that Stark’s armor saved her life, but it will be a little while longer before she’s on her feet. She knew you were in Kentucky, there were zombie Chitauri, then she got stabbed.”

 

Gloved hands tipped Clint over onto his back. “Don’t fight the sedatives!” the doctor called as she and her staff exited the room. “Get some rest, Agent. We’ll be at Yellowknife before you know it.”

 

“Wait, what?” Clint looked around for the IV-line holder. He reached for the tall rack but Coulson swat his hand aside. “I don’t want to sleep! I have a hundred questions!”

 

“Clint.” Coulson added some weight against the hand he held. “Calm down. Stay still. You can’t see yourself. You don’t know how wrecked you look. Questions and answers can wait until you’re better.”

 

Clint’s words began to slur together. “Don’t wanna wait. Gotta know. You’re alive. Alive, Phil!”

 

Coulson slid a pillow under Clint’s swollen ankle and then draped an ice pack over it. “Fury can answer most of your questions when you get to the safehouse.”

 

The skin between Clint’s eyes wrinkled. “You mean when _we’re_ safe in the safehouse. _We_ , right?”

 

Phil avoided his friend’s eyes again. “We’re dropping the Avengers off in Yellowknife,” he said without meeting Clint’s eyes. “My team and I… We have a mission to get back to.”

 

Barton squirmed. “Seriously? You come back from the dead and immediately bail on me? That’s rude, man.”

 

“Not what I want, Clint, I assure you.” Phil braided his fingers together and perched on one side of the stretcher. “Neither is this: you can’t tell anyone that I’m alive.”

 

Barton’s body went rigid. “You’re joking.”

 

“I wasn’t supposed to show any of you my face,” Coulson admitted. “SHIELD has very few cards left to play, Barton. We’ve got to hold onto every advantage we’ve got. One day my beating heart might just be the card we need to win a big hand.”

 

Clint paled. “I’ll keep your secret,” he promised, “but you know I have to tell **_her_**.”

 

“No.” Phil braced his fists on top of the mattress and pushed. His throat worked under his necktie. “ _Nobody else_. Not even her.”

 

Clint’s eyes begged. “I have to tell her. I tell her everything. She knows about my family, my past, what Loki did to me… We’re _partners_ , Phil. Partners for life.”

 

“No. For her safety, _no_.”

 

Water filled Clint’s eyes. “You can’t ask me to do that. You can’t ask me to not tell **_my wife that her big brother is alive_**!”

 

Coulson spoke slowly, softly—afraid they would be overheard. “If you do that, you’ll put Laura and the kids in danger and I know, _I know_ that’s the last thing you want.”

 

“Tell me why,” Clint whispered, “why, if this is supposed to be a secret, why are you giving this secret to me?”

 

Phil looked up and into the ceiling lights and blinked until the water in his eyes dried.  He started to speak, hesitated, and then started again. “When I realized it was you in that cabin I—I panicked, Clint. Had to see for myself that you were ok. Didn’t mean to burden you…” Coulson grasped Clint’s wrist and squeezed it. “We’ll see each other again. I’m sure of it.”

 

“Soon, I hope.” Clint licked his lips. His eyes closed halfway.

 

“I hope so, too.”

 

Limbs twitched as Clint fought the pain killers and tranquilizers sprinting through the IVs. “I saw the Helicarrier’s security footage. I saw Loki skewer you but, here you are. Here you are.”

 

Phil patted his brother-in-law’s hand. “Here I am. 

 

“Fury owes me a favor. Fury owes me fun-hundred fav-vors.” Clint shook his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “I’ll tell him to tell you to let me tell Laura about—about you. You won’t disobey him.” 

 

“Technically, I don’t work for Fury anymore.” A smile slid up one side of Phil’s face. “He’s no longer the director of SHIELD. I am.”

 

Clint’s eyelids drooped. “Really? Really, really?” His cheek lolled against his pillow.

 

“And I’m a good boss. Won’t fire you even after that crack about my hair,” Phil told him. “And those 300 plus HYDRA sites? I’ll bet you two months’ pay that my team takes down more than the Avengers do.”

 

“Mmm,” Clint sighed. “Its-za bet…” His eyes closed.

 

“Rest, Clint. We’ll all be together again—”

 

Suddenly, the jet lurched to starboard. Phil scrambled to keep his sleeping brother-in-law on the stretcher. Another tilt, this time to port, this time with more momentum. Nurses stumbled into the room and buckled Barton down while Coulson left the room to see what was going on. The jet pitched a third time, and Phil heard a thump above his head. A steel escape hatch in the center of the corridor flipped up and Coulson dashed out of the way a second before the God of Thunder tumbled into the jet with an Avenger under each arm.

 

“Thor, are you trying to knock this ship out of the air—”

 

The jet bounced like a truck hitting a pothole. Sparks like fireworks spat down through the open hatch, and both Thor and Coulson arched their backs to protect Steve and Tony from the heat. “It is not I attacking you, Son of Coul,” Thor replied when the plane stabilized. “A HYDRA craft followed you out of the forest.”

 

“I’ll have doctors get Stark and Rogers to—” Red flooded Phil’s face and he grabbed Thor’s arm. “Why aren’t you surprised that I’m alive?” Thor’s only response was to stand up straight and wipe the sweat from his brow. “Sif told you?”

 

“Sif did indeed.”

 

“I asked her not to.”

 

“Of the two of us, who is she most loyal to?” Thor scoffed. He unhooked Mjolnir from his belt and held the hammer above his head. “I will protect the jet.” Thor leapt up through the hatch and closed it without another word.

 

“Get Stark and Rogers somewhere safe!” Phil ordered nearby medics. “I’ll be—”

 

“Coulson?” a meek voice mumbled.

 

Phil made eye contact with a semiconscious Steve Rogers before he could stop himself. “Son of a bitch!” he smacked his own nose with his palm.

 

Steve nudged the unconscious Stark with his elbow. “Look, Tony, Coulson’s alive. Or we’re all dead. Either way…”

 

“Captain, this isn’t how I wanted you to find—” Phil felt, heard, and smelled a missile connect with his ship. “ _Crap_!”

 

 _Coulson_! May barked over the coms.

 

Steve’s eyes widened and he mumbled “Coulson?” as if for the first time. “Look, Tony, Coulson’s alive…”

 

Tony woke up, then. Part of his brain, at least: one-third awake, one-third asleep, one-third in a dream. “Phil?”

 

“Dammit!” Coulson sighed. He sidestepped over to the intercom and accessed the cockpit. “May, update!”

 

 _Two bogies, starboard_ , May said through her mic. _HYDRA Quinjets. They want us to land._

 

“They made contact?”

 

_Technically, no, but the fact that they detonated air mines beside us instead of taking us out with missiles tells me they don’t want all of us dead—at least, not in the next five minutes._

 

Phil rolled his eyes. “You’re such a comfort during a crisis.”

 

 _We should be dead_ , May insisted. _We’re a sitting duck—a flying sitting duck. Bastards stayed invisible right up until the moment they fired_.  

 

“Mayday?”

 

 _Haven’t had a chance to blink, Phil, let alone call for help! Weapons are down, I’m taking evasive maneuvers. What the hell—is Thor on the roof_? The pitter-patter of showering sparks echoed off the hull. Thunder roared from all around them. _Thor’s on the roof and—and he just took down the bad guys. Wow._

 

Relief briefly numbed Phil’s extremities. “Find us somewhere safe to land, May. We have to make repairs before we go any further.”

 

 _Fury’s calling. Patching him through, now_.

 

“Roger that.” Phil watched his staff take Steve and Tony away. He was about to go check on Clint when a limping Bruce Banner stumbled into the corridor. Dazed, dizzy, blinking hard but on his feet, the doctor did a double take when he realized who he was looking at. “ _Coulson_?”

 

“ _Shit_.” Phil put his face in his hands. “Every time I imagined revealing to my friends that I’m still alive it was always at the tail end of a relaxing dinner party with lots of alcohol…”

 

“What the hell? Were you going to jump out of a cake?” Bruce demanded. “Maybe parachute in? Fly into the room with a jetpack? Am I the last to know? I’m the last to know—aren’t I, Coulson?”

 

 _Coulson_? called a voice over the intercom. May had patched Fury through on the two-way system, and an exasperated Black Widow along with him. _Phil Coulson?_ Natasha screeched. 

 

Coulson tossed his hands into the air.

 

**To Be Continued**


	15. Parade of Heroes

One year after the Battle of New York, 4 million people lined the streets of the city between Avengers Tower and Columbus Circle to see what Americans fondly called the 'Parade of Heroes.' The anniversary celebration rivaled Macy's Thanksgiving Parade with just as many floats, marching bands, dance troupes, singers, entertainers, and enormous inflated balloons precariously tethered to sleep-deprived volunteers. Instead of Snoopy and SpongeBob, levitating inflated Hulks and Thors and Iron Man's roamed the streets.

Every school in the city spent months designing floats in honor of the heroes of that day: firemen, policemen, paramedics, and civilians in addition to the Avengers. Pepper Potts chose the top twenty entries and provided Stark Industries funding to the winning schools to create their floats in real life. Those in honor of Iron Man traveled down the parade route first. In front, the featured float showed a crude timeline of Tony Stark's life. Costumed kids pretended to be his parents, his schoolmates, the terrorists who captured him, the first suit, and on and on to Iron Man falling back to earth after flying through the wormhole. In their version he landed on an untouched Stark Tower perfectly intact, puffing his chest out with pride. Adults and kids alike clapped as it went by.

Banner's first float was all Hulk and zero Bruce. Kids dressed in padded green costumes wore scowling Hulk masks and tossed green candies at the audience: caramel apple suckers, bags of green M&M's and sour Skittles, lime jellybeans and tootsie rolls, green apple Blow Pops, and apple-flavored Airheads. Standing on top of a building, King Kong-like, a mechanical Hulk with gigantic muscled limbs flexed one arm and then the other. When the crowd clapped loud enough, the mechanical Hulk opened bear trap jaws and roared.

Thor's float prioritized Norse mythology over true Asgardian architecture and symbolism. It featured a traditional Viking longboat. Each child in the class manned an oar and in the center of the boat, like a mast, stood a glowing Mjolnir. A papier-mâché facsimile of Thor stood at the front of the ship with his arms stretched wide a la Kate Winslet in 'Titanic.'

The third graders who designed Steve's float constructed an enormous chandelier-mobile made up of hundreds of stained glass American flags, blue and silver shields, and the letter "A." When the light hit the stained glass just right, and the various colors lined up just so, the mobile resembled a gigantic shield. People dressed in World War Two uniforms waved flags and saluted the crowd. Natasha's float featured every Russian stereotype the American teenagers knew. Black Widow spiders made of yarn stuffed with fluff wore red uniforms with fur hats or scarves around their heads like babushkas. Clint's representation resembled a Cupid more than the badass marksman. Kids shot glitter into the crowd out of fake arrows.

The six Avengers (protected behind four inches of ballistic glass) were the main attraction at the conclusion of the parade. Wearing their full uniforms (minus the masks and weapons and plus all of Banner's clothes), they stood atop a fake Quinjet while costumed Chitauri in extra-large oblong heads stumbled around on cartoony feet. Adults clapped. Children screamed. The Avengers smiled and waved with all the enthusiasm they could muster. Once the final float reached the Tower, the mayor of New York joined the Avengers and delivered a speech to the onlookers and the 50 million others watching the event live.

While each individual Avenger gave his or her own 1-5-minute speech (Tony's was the longest and Barton's was barely more than a wave), the  _ **REAL**_  Avengers watched the commotion from the sidelines. Nat and Steve were disguised and blended perfectly into the crowd at the mayor's 2:00 while Thor and Bruce stood at his 10. Clint found the perfect sniper position on top of the Tower roof. Inside Avengers Tower, Pepper, Rhodes, Hill, Coulson, Wilson, and Happy Hogan controlled the Life Model Decoys on the float from the safety of the Tower's labs. If someone or something got through that ballistic glass they'd only find holograms.

After the mayor's closing speech, a mechanical Hulk roared and spout fire from its green throat.

* * *

_TWO MONTHS AGO_

Bruce raced down the hallway alongside a short, plump nurse hurriedly binding surgical scrubs around her torso. "Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Banner, but we can't start the surgery when he's this agitated. Just try and get him to relax."

"I know what to do," Bruce grunted. "What's his pulse and blood pressure?"

"High. Both are too high. We were about to sedate him when he woke up, started panicking, asking for you and Captain Rogers and Agent Barton and—"

"Let them rest. They need rest."

"Right, Doctor, that's why I went looking for you."

"Did you shave Tony's head yet?"

"Just a square inch at the point of entry."

"Tell me you told him before you did it. He's… Sensitive."

"Um…"

Banner sighed. They reached the double doors that led to the operating room and he punched his way through them. "Dammit, Nurse—"

"Myers, Sir. Miranda Myers."

"Myers, tell the staff not to do anything with my teammates unless I'm there to supervise, got it? I don't care if it's stitches or a sponge bath or head surgery, you  _will_  inform me."

The woman gulped audibly. "Sure, Doctor."

Bruce hesitated. He put a shaking hand on Myers' shoulder and offered his most apologetic look. "Sorry. I know I'm overreacting. I know. It's just…"

Myers held her palms up to stop his sentence. "The Yellowknife staff were debriefed, Doctor. We know the Avengers have been through Hell. Anything we can do to help you and your team, let us know."

Bruce closed his eyes, counted to three, then opened them and nodded.

A shout from inside the operating room. The sound of glass shattering. Bruce bypassed two surgeons and three nurses, hustled forward to the bed in the center of the white room, and grabbed a flailing fist. " _ **Tony**_!"

Tony looked at, and then smiled at Banner like he was sunlight after an endless night. "Bruce…" His lower lip trembled. The upper one joined in. "I—I don't understand—Where are we? What the hell's going on? Cap, the others—are we ok? God, my head hurts…" Tony massaged his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. His chest leapt as if from a ferocious hiccup. "I don't—Why—Bruce, I can't  _breathe_ —" Bloodshot eyes bulged from bruised eye sockets. "Bruce, I need you to be  _THAT KIND of doctor_  for me right now, buddy.  _Please_."

Bruce sat on the side of the bed, on top of the sheets covering Tony's naked body, and gripped his friends hand with both of his. "Look at me. Tony? In my eyes. Right now."

Stark tried and failed to take a steadying breath. The operating room lights made the shallow tears in his eyes and bruises on his face stand out even more. Tony was completely out of his armor. Not only was the metal suit missing, but so was his sense of humor, his shield of wit. Banner was witnessing unhinged distress. "Last thing you remember?"

"Cabin. Thor. Cap.  _Is Cap_ —?"

"Steve's ok. Thor got you both out." Bruce leaned in so that his face was all that Tony could see. "We're in Canada. Yellowknife. Underground SHIELD fortress. Fury and Natasha are here. Steve and Clint are ok. You…There's swelling in your brain, hear me? You had a seizure, remember? They're going to do surgery to relieve the swelling. Won't take long. Won't go wrong. But for them to do it, I need you to relax, all right? You gotta relax, Tony, so the doctors can help you."

Tony squinted. He watched as Bruce's hand landed and stayed on his forehead. Banner's palm felt cool, almost refreshing. Tony licked his lips and whispered, "Hungry."

"I know."

"Thirsty. Real thirsty."

"I know. Surgery first. Deep breaths for me now. That's better."

Tony's breaths evened out. "You know how, when you're a kid… You watch a horror movie—majorly scary—and then you don't want to go to sleep because you know, you just  _know_  you're going to have nightmares." Bruce nodded, encouraging his friend. "Don't want to sleep, Bruce. What if I don't—"

"You'll wake up," Banner said sternly. "Tony, you'll wake up. Everything's going to be fine. Believe me. Believe me? Have I ever lied to you?"

A slight twinkle in those russet eyes. "Not that I know of," Tony whispered. The medical staff formed a tight half-circle nearby. They were ready. "Be there? When I wake up. Banner, you'll be there?"

Bruce nodded his chin at the double doors. "I'll be right outside while you're in surgery. The whole time. I promise. And I'll be with you when it's over, I'll be there when you wake up. I promise."

"Promise?" Tony asked, dizzy, dazed, surrendering to the sedatives.

"Promise," Bruce repeated. "Cross my heart and hope to—"

"Hope you  _don't_  die…" Tony's eyes slid shut. "Bruce, don't let them shave off more of my hair…" was his last conscious thought, slurred.

Behind Bruce, a scowling surgeon with white hair and a device on his face that resembled night vision goggles barked at Bruce to "get the hell out of the way already." Banner fumed—cheeks inflating—but he cupped Tony's cheek one last time and then turned on his heel.

* * *

_NOW_

Bruce, from deep in the crowd gathered around the parade floats, scowled up at the Hulk's mechanical twin. "Do they seriously think the Other Guy breathes fire?" he complained over the coms.

From his position on the Tower roof, Clint chuckled and declared that if it was the last thing he did, he'd make sure the Hulk learned to breathe fire because that would be, quote, 'wicked cool.' It was then— _right then_ —that someone wearing barbed wire busted through the floor underneath the holographic Avengers.

He wasn't wearing barbed wire, the real Avengers quickly realized.

He was made of it!

* * *

_TWO MONTHS AGO_

Bruce raced down the hallway alongside a tall, redheaded nurse wringing her hands so tightly they were white. "Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Banner, but we can't do this technique safely when he's this agitated. Just try and get him to relax."

"I know what to do," Bruce grunted—for the second time that hour. "Thought I lined up his bones perfectly. Could've sworn I did."

The nurse, Evangeline, tossed him a sympathetic look. "You were close, doctor. Maybe if you'd done it ten minutes earlier… Captain Rogers' healing abilities continue to surprise us."

"Super soldier or not," Bruce whispered under his breath, "this is going to hurt like hell."

A voice called to him half a moment before he entered operating room #2. "Doc, don't go blaming yourself." Inside, Phil Coulson was shaking his head at Steve Rogers, who lay on the bed with three orderlies putting their full weight on both of his arms and his one unbroken leg. Steve's teeth clamped down on his lip. Tendons vibrated as he tried to stay still. His body—his instincts, likely because of the pain—told him to fight the men. Sweat poured down Steve's neck as he fought with himself.

"Geeze, three steps backwards, fellas, come on!" Bruce all but commanded. The orderlies glanced at a doctor sitting in front of an x-ray nearby. She shrugged. They retreated. Bruce rushed past Coulson and braced his hand against Rogers' shoulder. "Steve."

"They have to re-fracture my leg." It was a report from Steve, not a complaint. "Bones didn't alight correctly. Healed wrong. They have to break my leg."

Coulson stood at Cap's opposite shoulder. "He's refusing even the IV painkillers. Says they'll just burn off from his metabolism. He needs something, Doc. Anything."

Bruce glanced around the room until his eyes found a medicine cabinet on the wall. He left Steve's side and rummaged through each shelf until he found what he was looking for: chalky, unmarked white pills meant for the lactose intolerant. After filling a small cup with water, Bruce dashed back to Steve and held the pills in front of his mouth. "Swallow," he ordered.

Cap frowned. "What is that?"

"Seemed like the right moment to show you. Tony and I have been working on these for months."

"What are they?"

"Painkillers. The most powerful in the world… as of last week. We've been studying your blood samples, Cap. Measuring your metabolism. Other drugs won't work on you but these? These are made especially for you. I promise, these will dull your pain almost instantly."

It was obvious that Steve feared the upcoming procedure more than he liked to admit because he took the pills without hesitation, without water. Less than 30 seconds later, he settled deeper into his bed. Muscles relaxed. Breathing slowed. "Ok," Cap sighed at the other doctor and the orderlies, "let's get this over with. Break my leg."

Bruce winked at Coulson. He said, without speaking, "Placebos even work on superheroes."

* * *

_NOW_

The second Enhanced to burst out of a float appeared to be made of tornadoes. The only things remotely human were her almond-shaped eyes and thin lips.

Her left arm was a tornado. So was her right. Her left leg was a tornado. So was her right.

With her torso also swirling with dark wind speckled by confetti and glitter debris accumulated from the parade, she almost resembled the cartoon Tasmanian Devil.

She aimed tornadoes at the Mayor like they were daggers. The six holograms disappeared, and the real Avengers converged.

* * *

_TWO MONTHS AGO_

Bruce raced down the hallway alongside a slim, redheaded nurse with a shaved head and studs in both of his ears. "Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Banner, but we can't use stitches and staples when he's this agitated. Just try and get him to relax."

"I know what to do," Bruce grunted— _for the third time that hour_. Unsurprised to find Natasha beside the patient in the bed in operating room #3, Bruce hesitated at the door. Judging by the damp sheets over Clint Barton's naked body and the used wash cloths piled in one corner, the archer was fighting one hell of a fever. Muscled fingers tore at IVs and bandages. Uneven fingernails scratched new slashes into burnt skin. The agitated Barton bounced on the bed and shouted something, but it was so slurred that Banner didn't understand a single syllable. Natasha's eyes met his. Looking relieved, she waved him forward.

He went to Nat first. "Easy," she gasped when he hugged her. "Kinda got hurt recently."

"Sorry! God…" Bruce held her at an arm's length. She wore her Black Widow uniform, so he told himself it was the dark fabric that made her look extra pale. "Wish the Hulk would've done a better job at protecting you—all of you. Thank God for Tony. I'm, um, glad you're, um…" he stumbled.

Her eyes briefly shone. "Glad you're ok, too." She grazed her thumb an inch down his neck. Goosebumps blossomed in the wake of her touch.

Something passed between them—unspoken, barely acknowledged, warm, completely overlooked by Hawkeye who suddenly tossed a pillow. It bounced off both of their faces, ruining whatever moment had occurred. "Attention!" he slurred. "Skin smells like mint and, look!" Clint tugged on a string of floss behind his shoulder. "'m growing somethin'!"

"Don't pull on—! Dammit." Banner hurried to Barton's side and grabbed his wrist. He looked down the archer's back and gasped, "Ah, Clint, I'm sorry, man."

Nat followed. "What is it?"

Bruce held up his hand to stop her from seeing the jagged slash of fresh blood and warm pus so gross it almost made him vomit. "Floss I used to knit up his wound wasn't exactly sterile. God, the heat off it…" Bruce glared around the otherwise empty room and barked, "Where did the rest of the staff go?"

Nat nodded her head towards the door. "Said they had to get more supplies. Gauze and bandages and—"

"Wet down a washcloth for me!" Bruce ordered far more firmly than he intended. "Search the cabinets for some cream at least. We can't wait another minute to start cleaning this wound." Natasha ran off and Bruce gripped both of Clint's upper arms and said his name, repeatedly.

Clint didn't meet his eyes. His own, feverish ones flitted around the room looking at everything and nothing. "Gotta get to Tony," he muttered. "He's hurt, Nat. And Banner—where's…? Cap?"

"Barton." Bruce winced when he touched Clint's face—that's how hot his skin was. "Barton, stop throwing pillows! Everyone's all right, but you won't be if you keep fighting us, ok?"

Glazed eyes finally met Bruce's fierce ones. "Parade's tomorrow," Clint said. "I… Uniform isn't clean. Tony has a robot for that, right?"

"The parade isn't for a couple months, buddy. And we're not home yet."

Clint's eyes suddenly widened, almost violently. "Gotta get food for Tony! Cabin pantry's empty! I ate that last lima bean… I'm sorry…"

A cringe crossed Bruce's face when Clint dug his fingers into the doctor's skin. "Natasha!" he called. "Hurry!"

* * *

_NOW_

Enhanced being #3 was twice as tall as Thor and three times as wide. The dude was a brick wall. Literally. Literally, he was made of red bricks. Dust scattered when he swung both brick fists through the mechanical Hulk. Every remaining civilian fled the scene—screaming, bumping into each other and off trash cans, stampeding away from the Tower as fast as possible. The three Enhanced ignored the mayor, the nearby police officers, and lined up together to face the incoming superheroes they were there to kill.

One of Hawkeye's arrows bounced off the red-brown space between the brick entity's eyes. The Enhanced didn't even blink.

* * *

_ONE MONTH AGO_

Steve Rogers sat in a dusty broom closet with a pencil and a sketchbook. The superhero artist usually sketched what was in front of him but drawing from memory, like he was doing beneath the single lightbulb, felt like trying to remember a dream hours after he woke up. So, his version of Tony's blueprints for a low-orbit satellite looked more like a blob of wet cement than the Hulk-Buster armor. He hoped Tony wouldn't mind. The inventor's drawings from the cabin were unsalvageable. Steve was doing his best to recreate them.

Natasha entered the closet without knocking. "Is that a fish?" She balanced her chin on his shoulder and cocked her head to the side. "Manta ray doing the limbo?"

Steve was glad she couldn't see him smile. "Drawing new inventions was the only thing that kept Tony going in the woods."

"The only thing, huh?" Natasha was glad he couldn't see her smile. "And what kept you going?"

Steve's thoughts went to Peggy, and then to Tony's To Do list. Something about Howard getting his foot stuck in a toilet? He'd make Tony tell him that story… If Stark actually came out of the medically-induced coma the Yellowknife SHIELD physicians put him in. "Is it time?"

Natasha nodded by digging her chin deeper into his shoulder. "I told them to wait. Thought you might want to be there. Figured he would want you to be." Natasha sidestepped the door and held her gloved hand out for his. "Come on."

Steve stared. "Do you think he heard us? When we were talking to him all month. Can people hear when they're comatose?"

"I hope so." Nat flexed her fingers. "I believe so. Come on, Steve."

The two Avengers joined Fury, Banner, Barton, Thor, a pair of doctors and two nurses all crowded into the operating room transformed into Tony Stark's personal hospital. Stark lay in bed exactly where Steve saw him the night before. And the morning before that, the day before that. At Tony's side he overheard harried medical staff talk about swelling and blood loss and, in an effort to keep his comatose comrade from overhearing how close he was to death, Cap told Tony his own stories. The one about him and Bucky sneaking onto a Ferris Wheel at before dawn to munch on stolen cotton candy and watch the sunrise. The one about him and Bucky nailing their friends' shoes to the floor and watching them fall on their faces. The one about him and Bucky… They were all about him and Bucky.

For some reason, Tony looked different in a coma than he did just asleep. It was the stillness, Steve decided. Absolute stillness. Tony usually twitched in his sleep. He mumbled about Pepper or different types of screwdrivers and converters and software. But in a coma? Frozen like a corpse—like a Capsicle. Such vulnerability made Steve extra uncomfortable. He must've been wearing his anxiety all over his face because everyone's eyes were suddenly on him instead of Stark. Steve nodded as if giving his permission. A nurse injected new liquids into Tony's IV. A doctor removed the breathing tube from his throat. Beeps and lights on various pieces of equipment got louder and brighter. Then, just as suddenly, the sounds slowed, and the lights dimmed.

Thor pointed his hammer at Tony's heartbeat monitor. "This device is a good sign, yes? Stark will awaken soon?"

Banner removed his glasses. Everyone knew that was a  _bad_  sign. "Dammit, Tony," he muttered, staring at lines of green numbers floating across a black screen.

Clint noticed the green flush up Bruce's neck. "Easy, Banner," he said, laying a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Give it a few minutes, man."

Bruce shook his head and said, "His vitals are still fluctuating. That shouldn't happen!"

Fury stood with his arms crossed against his knee-length black coat. "We can always put him back on life support, Banner."

" _For how long_?" Bruce hissed. "Do any of you want to be the one to call Pepper to pull the plug?"

Natasha took Bruce's elbow. "Let's take a walk," she said. It was an order, not an invitation. "I promised you the next verse of that Russian lullaby. I've got an idea about how we can put it to good use." Bruce reluctantly left.

The medical staff looked at Fury for an answer. Fury looked at Rogers. "If he doesn't wake up then how long can he last without life support?" Cap asked the room.

"40 more minutes," said the redheaded nurse. "50 at the most."

"Then let's give him 30," Steve decided. He dragged a chair to Tony's bed and sat down. Barton sat on the opposite side. Thor and Fury grabbed their own seats and sat at Tony's feet with their boots propped up on the blankets. The vigil began.

28 minutes of false alarms and flashing lights later, a groggy, dizzy, grumpy Tony Stark opened his eyes and asked for water.

**To Be Continued**


	16. New Players

 

Below the Tower, standing in the center of the debris-strewn street, Steve raised his arm straight up, palm up, and circled his hand in a wide counterclockwise motion. Natasha, on his right with both electroshock batons out and glowing, cocked her eyebrow and demanded, “What the hell are you doing?”

 

Steve lowered his arm and stepped aside to clear a path for last minute civilians fleeing the parade route. “It’s the rallying signal,” he said. “Means ‘assemble.’”

 

Nat scrunched her nose at him—a partially pitying look. “We all have coms and earbuds, Rogers. You could just say ‘Hey, guys, come gather around me. Chop, chop.’”

 

Steve rolled humor-filled eyes and called over the coms, “Assemble, Avengers!”

 

“Nice. I like the alliteration,” Natasha complimented. “But I think ‘Avengers, assemble’ has a better ring to it.” Natasha tugged on Steve’s sleeve to get him to move when a mother and her four kids (all wearing Hulk costumes) ran around one of the crashed floats and in the direction of a police station six blocks away.

 

An arrow pulling an iron cord soared over their heads and smashed into the nearest stone building. Barton slid his bow over the cable, jumped off the Tower roof and ziplined down towards the road, slowing as he went thanks to carefully spaced notches. When he was over his teammates’ heads he flipped backwards, unhooked his bow, and landed on his feet between Steve and Nat. “Told you HYDRA would attack at the parade.”

 

“It was I who first prophesized this,” Thor declared, running up with Banner.

 

“I’m the one who said they’d bring those mutants we’ve been hearing rumors about,” Bruce reminded them.

 

Steve silenced them all by saying, “Who cares who first thought of this! There’s a guy made of _bricks_! Anyone have any bright ideas about how to fight tornadoes and bricks?”

 

No one did.

 

“Barton, that was an awesome landing!” Bruce gently punched Clint’s upper left arm. “Man. If the SHIELD academy still existed, I’d go just to watch the training!”

 

“Wouldn’t help,” Barton shrugged. “I learned that move in the circus.”

 

“The—the circus?” Bruce glanced at Thor and Steve and confirmed that they looked just as surprised as he.

 

“You were bored in that cabin for days and you never entertained our teammates with epic tales of your naked entertainment?” demanded Thor. All eyes stared at him. Even a few civilians briefly paused while they ran. Thor raised his eyebrows, confused by the sudden silence and equally sudden stillness. “What? Men and women performing in Asgardian circuses do not wear garments. Is the tradition not the same in this realm?”

 

The coms crackled. “After we defeat HYDRA and find Loki’s scepter we’re definitely taking a field trip to Asgard,” Tony Stark announced.

 

Thor chuckled and announced that audience members at Asgardian circuses are also required to be naked.

 

“ _Boys_!” Nat suddenly shouted.

 

A brick projectile sailed past the team. Like a cannonball. It shattered a window on the Tower’s lower level. Thor swung the hammer like a baseball bat and sent the second back the way it came. The three Enhanced beings jumped off the final float to avoid the lightning trailing behind the brick like Jellyfish tentacles. Fire erupted and the green paper skin covering the mechanical, fire-breathing Hulk burned away, leaving a twisted, scowling aluminum skeleton.

 

Barbed wire wrapped around Steve’s ankle like a snake. It broke through his boot when it squeezed. Blood inched out of deep puncture wounds. Wire lifted Cap into the air and shook him like a maraca. Tornado lady stretched her limbs out and trapped Thor in crosswinds from four different directions. Mjolnir fell out of his hand and his red cape wrapped around his body like a straightjacket. The man made of bricks approached Bruce with the same absence of grace as the Abominable Snow Monster in ‘Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer.’  Curved bricks revealed the vague outline of a human face, so that’s what Bruce talked to as he backpedaled, palms up.

 

“I’m sorry HYDRA did this to you,” Bruce told the mutated man. “What did they use? Cellular amalgamation? Radiation? Cosmic rays?” The man wound up like a baseball pitcher and threw a brick. Bruce ducked. “Do you really want to be a weapon? We might be able to reverse these effects. Trust me when I say I’d give anything to be able to cure the monster side of me—” Bricks suddenly reared up and collapsed on Banner like a tsunami of stone. The weight covered every inch of him and pinned him to the ground.

 

Clint and Natasha retreated a few yards from the scene. “I don’t have a plan, either,” said Clint, reading his partner’s mind.

 

From the Tower, Tony said, “I’m on my way.”

 

“No!” both Barton and Romanoff barked.

 

“Absolutely not!” came Pepper’s voice from the background of Stark’s microphone. “Tony, you’re still healing—there’s no way you can operate a suit without getting yourself killed or accidentally shooting a teammate. Like Bruce… Again.”

 

“Civilians are safe. Coming to you now,” announced a new voice. Falcon and War Machine dropped to the street. Hulk emerged, then. He erupted out of the pile of bricks like a dolphin breaching an ocean wave. Rectangular rocks launched in every direction. Several hit Wire in the torso and sent the being flying down the road. More nailed Tornado between the eyes—the only solid part of the former woman. A bunch dented Rhodes and Sam’s armor as they protected Barton and Romanoff from the debris. Thor, dizzy, collapsed straight back onto his spine and stared up at the clouds, wondering why they were spinning. Steve limped back to the group, blood in his wake, and ordered the Hulk to get the Asgardian to his feet. Thor tried but failed to stand longer than a few seconds without Hulk propping him up.

 

The Enhanced beings regrouped. Tornado pulled her wind back into a humanoid shape and that was when Nat noticed that Brick’s bricks were, no matter how far they’d been launched, retreating to the original mass like Mjolnir to Thor’s hand. She stomped her boot down on one and, even though it wiggled, trying to return home, her weight kept it pinned. “Clint!”

 

Clint saw it. His left fingers automatically plucked adhesive arrows out of his quiver and he started firing them in every direction. Globs ten times stickier than Gorilla Glue trapped one brick after another on the asphalt. When Brick reassembled his body, he was missing one arm and his right leg was only built of single blocks instead of rows and rows of them. Wire detached barbed metal from his or her body and wrapped it around her comrade’s gimpy leg to strengthen it.

 

Steve faced the three Enhanced. The Avengers lined up behind him in a “V” formation, waiting for his orders. “What HYDRA did to you wasn’t just an illegal experimentation,” Cap shouted at their enemies, “it was an immoral violation! You don’t have to fight for them! Let us help you!”

 

A woman’s face appeared in the humanoid-shaped tornado. “We’ve chosen sides, Captain America!” she shouted. “It was the Avengers who brought the Chitauri to this city, to this planet! Loki came from a SHIELD facility! We’re here to stop you before you invite even more deadly aliens!”

 

Steve sighed and slung his shield onto his back holster. “We didn’t bring Loki here on purpose. HYDRA is lying to you!”

 

“Liar!” Wire spoke by vibrating the barbed cables like guitar strings.

 

“We don’t care that the media, the government, the whole world sees you as heroes!” declared Bricks in a high-pitched Helium voice that everyone—including Steve—couldn’t help but briefly giggle at. “We’ve been told the inside truth—the real truth! Taking the Avengers down is the only way to protect our families and to do that, we’ll let HYDRA turn us into any kind of weapon they want!”

 

Something metallic and heavy dropped to Cap’s side. Steve recognized the shape and colors of the Iron Man suit in his peripheral vision and without taking his eyes off the increasingly agitated Enhanced, he growled, “Dammit, Tony, I ordered you to stay out of this fight!”

 

\---------

 

**ONE HOUR AGO**

 

“Team,” said Steve over the group coms, “remember our training.”

 

“Aye,” Thor said. He had to shout to be heard over the confetti cannons, trumpets, shouts, clapping hands, stomping feet, and other parade noises. “‘Evac’ means ‘evacuate,’ which means exit the scene swiftly. ‘Field’ refers to the battlefield. ‘Roger that’ means to acknowledge. And if one of our comrades is injured, or ‘hit,’ Stark or I—whoever is closest to the fallen—will immediately get him or her to safety. Even if Strucker is within my grasp, I swear to prioritize you mortals first. And I will insert the IV into the arm, _not_ the eyeball.”

 

Steve struggled to hold in a laugh. He also struggled not to look at Thor who he knew was on the other side of the street behind the Black Widow float. “A+ for the God of Thunder,” he announced. “Banner?”

 

“I’ll wait until someone calls a Code Green.” Bruce sounded like he was rolling his eyes, like he’d rehearsed the sentence a hundred times. “If my expertise as me is needed, or if it’s worth the risk to give me a gun, that’s a Code Purple and I’ll get in the fight as myself where I’ll try to _stay myself_ as long as possible.”

 

Steve spotted the mayor emerging from the Tower. He tipped his ballcap up and squinted through his sunglasses. “A+ for my favorite mad scientist.”

 

“Hey!” Tony protested, his voice a squeal over the mic. “Come on, I’m madder than he is.”

 

Bruce sputtered, “I zapped myself with three suns’ worth of radiation! What’s madder than that?”

 

“Are you seriously arguing about which one of you is the most irresponsible?” Nat questioned. She was kneeling on the sidewalk with a bucket of candy while greedy children emptied it one fistful at a time.

 

“I think you mean which one of them is the most awesome,” Hawkeye commented from his perch. “The answer is neither, by the way. Awesome-st Avenger is right here.”

 

Steve cleared his throat like a teacher trying to get the class’ attention. “And what’s your assignment today, Stark?”

 

Tony sighed so loudly that the coms all buzzed from the interference. “I, Captain Rogers, will sit my ass down and not say a single damn word. And even if you’re all dead and the city is burning even then, I am still not allowed to put on the suit.”

 

“Because?” Natasha prompted.

 

Tony continued in monotone. “Because zombie Chitauri broke my head and I’m not thinking straight enough to operate such complex machinery, so I’m more likely to hurt myself or someone else than help get the bad guy… By the way, I hate you all so much and you’re going to die without me.”

 

“Tony, just go to the lab and work on Veronica.” Bruce shrugged as if Stark could see him. “Don’t even watch.”

 

“Don’t watch you get your asses kicked?”

 

“Such faith,” Nat sighed. “Bruce. Hey, Bruce? Stick near me. If the Other Guy decides to play, then we might need to test out the lullaby to keep him from going after civilians.”

 

Bruce sighed. “Not that I doubt you, Nat, but if a grenade launcher can’t stop the Hulk then what makes you think this lullaby can?”

 

“It’s worth a try.”

 

“Lots of things are worth a try,” he agreed.

 

No one saw Nat blush.

 

\--------

 

**NOW**

 

The Iron Man faceplate flipped up to reveal a grinning Phil Coulson. “Stark summoned a suit,” Phil told the team, “so Pepper slapped him, and I hijacked it.”

 

Two more suits descended—one silver and red and the other gold and navy blue. “Hill? Hogan?” Steve assumed. Both occupants gave him a thumb’s up. Steve nodded. “Welcome to the Avengers. All right, then. We need a plan. Talk to me, team.”

 

“We might be able to cripple the big guy if we can dislodge the bricks and keep them apart,” said Hawkeye.

 

“Hulk and War Machine, you’re with Barton and Romanoff,” Cap ordered. “Thor? Think you can handle those tornadoes?”

 

“I have an idea,” said the god. “Perhaps the bird can help me.”

 

Wilson, who stood behind Thor, rolled his eyes.

 

“And I need the Iron Men with me,” said Cap. “Let’s see if we can melt those wires.”

 

“Roger that, Captain.” Coulson beamed with pride and shut his faceplate.

 

A brick bounced off Steve’s shield. Their time was up.

 

Cap returned his attention to the Enhanced. “Last chance to surrender,” he warned. “If you don’t, you’ll either die here today or spend the rest of your lives in prison. Final warning.”

 

Bricks, Wire, and Tornado appeared to look at each other. Then, at some unspoken cue, they attacked.

 

Up in the Tower, Pepper Potts and the real Happy Hogan exchanged worried looks with the real Maria Hill. “I shouldn’t have let him go,” Pep mourned.

 

Hill’s thin lips pressed tight and she said, without meeting Pepper’s eyes, “Don’t think any of us could’ve stopped him.”

 

Happy, wringing his hands, asked, “Which one is he?”

 

Water in Pepper’s eyes. “I—I mixed them up. I think Tony’s in the silver suit and the navy one is the Iron Legion prototype but I’m… I’m not sure. Oh, God.” Pep pressed her hands over her eyes and slid them down her face. “I can’t watch this…”

 

**To Be Continued**


	17. Harm's Way

Wind erupted. Every window within a block imploded. Glass blasted into the Tower and sent Pepper, Hill, and Happy diving for cover. A decapitated head from an Iron Man balloon went sailing towards the harbor. The gale plucked up parade debris: confetti, glitter, pompoms, candy wrappers, abandoned folding chairs, bottles of sunscreen, empty strollers, half-eaten hamburgers, paper cups, police hats, sheet music, shoes, jellybeans, oars, stained glass, American flags, Nerf arrows, red brick dust, a clarinet, and a homemade sign that read _Marry Me, Tony!_ The Avengers bent their knees and lowered their heads. Thor had to dodge when a motorcycle, twirling like Frisbee, almost took him out at the knees. The lightest, Natasha, lost her footing first. She would’ve been blown to Oz if the silver and red Iron Man suit hadn’t grabbed her wrist. Clint slipped next, but Rhodes grabbed him around the waist. Steve started to slide. He tripped over a sewer cover and landed hard on his injured foot. The Vibranium shield rolled away but Cap activated the Vibramag gauntlet on his left arm and the magnets instantly brought it right back into his hands.

 

“I’ll hold this off!” Thor stepped forward, Mjolnir swinging clockwise an arm’s length in front of his chest. Despite the hammer’s span and the shorter leather strap, the shield of air it started to build stretched from one side of the road to the other. The Asgardian swung his weapon faster than ever—so fast that it was nearly invisible to the naked eye. Tendrils of tornadoes tried to get through, over, beneath, or around the new shield but found no opening. Falcon leapt into action. He resembled a circling vulture as he soared above the scene, blasting down any tornado that stretched too high. The Enhanced Tornado was contained.

 

The brick creature’s roar resembled the Hulk’s. It crumbled the sentient Wires into a smooth ball and chucked it over Thor’s shield. The ball bounced past the Asgardian and nearly took out the rest of the team like a bowling ball through pins. Barbed metal like sentient vines wrapped around the navy-blue Iron Man’s throat and strangled it so hard and so tight and so viciously that the helmet popped off like the cork from a bottle of wine. Steve, doing his best to block other metal tentacles with his shield, yelped high in his throat and then screamed deep in his chest when the torso, like an axed oak, fell and landed at his feet. He expected blood to shower his boots. He expected to see hair sticking out of the cracked helmet. HYDRA’s monsters had beheaded one of his friends and Steve hadn’t felt a pit in his stomach so heavy since Bucky fell from the train and Tony fell from the wormhole—

 

Shadows replaced afternoon sunlight when it poured into the empty helmet and the empty suit. _Empty_. The suit was empty—not a suit, a hollow robot! Steve’s knees briefly turned to liquid and if he wasn’t mid-battle, he would’ve collapsed in relief right then and there. In puberty voice, Cap shouted, “ ** _DAMMIT, STARK_**!” and punted the helmet like a football. It bounced off Wire and, dazed, the Enhanced let go of the other Iron Men and tumbled onto the street. Coulson and the silver and red Iron Man returned to the air at Steve’s 1:00 and 8:00 positions. Weapons charge, palms aimed, the suits unleashed fire.  

 

A block east, Hulk smashed. Hulk smashed brick wall. Repeatedly. Smash, smash, _smash_.

 

Hawkeye, held aloft by War Machine hovering in the air, sent glue arrows down like rain.

So much glue and so many bricks covered the street that Nat almost lost a shoe when she ran into the Tower to get more arrows. The gentle piccolo music in the slow elevator scratched at the backs of Romanoff’s eyes as she stood in the center of it, gasping for breath, arms crossed, foot tapping. She didn’t look up at the sound of her name when she entered the lab and made a beeline for Clint’s arsenal. With a quiver of adhesive arrows over each shoulder, she sprinted to the windows and tossed them. Rhodey caught one and Clint caught the other.

 

Nat was about to race back down to the fight when her brain did a head count without her knowledge. She stopped at the elevator, looked back over her shoulder and confirmed that Pepper Potts stood at the broken window with both Hogan and Hill. Although she already knew the answer, she still asked, growling, “Where’s Stark?”

 

Below: Enough bricks held on to form a fist. It struck when Hulk dove at it, and catapulted the green beast into the air, over Steve’s head, and directly into Thor’s back. The hammer fell. The shield of air disappeared. Tornado, unleashed, lashed out with everything it had. The fresh wind sent Rhodes spinning through the sky, only holding onto Clint by one ankle. Falcon went flying past the Empire State Building and didn’t come back. The pair of Iron Men smacked against a brick building like bugs. Cap barely dodged the melting, car-sized tumbleweed that was Wire that went careening down the street faster than a taxi. It hit the police station and, instead of bouncing, flattened like a pancake from the excessive heat. Any brick not glued down went through the broken windows, bounced off armor, or rolled away.

 

Dust slid off Cap’s back when he fought his way to his feet. None of the whole bricks moved towards a mutual spot because there was none to return to. The brick entity had destroyed itself and the barbed wire creature had melted.

 

Wind sent shards of glass that tore through Steve’s left sleeve and sliced up his cheek. He crawled forward—trying to stay beneath the worst tornado—towards Thor. Thor, who knelt beside Banner! Bruce lay on his side, unconscious, the last blushes of green leaving his skin. The bricks had punched the Hulk right out of him. A silver and red Iron Man suit fought through the storm, plucked Bruce up and carried him up and into the Tower to safety. When it and Coulson joined Steve and Thor, Cap had reached the god, who was clawing at his whirling red cape to stop it from blocking his view.

 

“Odin’s beard!” Thor cursed. He ripped his cape and let it float away on the breeze. “What should we do now?” Thor roared over the train-like noise. “This wind will not allow me to cage it again!”

 

The Avengers ducked under a flying hotdog cart.

 

Coulson knelt between the Avengers and opened his mask. “What if we’re going about this the wrong way?” Phil wondered.

 

“What do you mean?” shouted Cap.

 

“We can’t contain wind! It’s not like Thor can stuff a storm into the sewer. And glue won’t hold down trillions of particles to keep it from reforming into a tornado!”

 

The Avengers ducked under a police car—a police car on fire.

 

“If you have an actual idea, I’m listening!” Steve said grumpily.

 

“Instead of trying to shrink the tornadoes, we need to lengthen them! Stretch that thing’s limbs out so far, so thin that it loses all cohesion! It’ll just dissipate!”

 

The metallic skeleton that used to be the fire-breathing Hulk rolled off its float and into the Tower’s first floor lobby.

 

“We must compel the winds to chase us!” Thor realized. “We must scatter in every direction!”

 

Steve shielded his eyes and looked in the direction of the Tower labs (which he could barely see through the rushing fog of dirt and confetti). “Stark? Sam? Romanoff? Unless anybody has a better idea, we’re going with this one!” He paused. He counted to three. “Avengers, come in! Report!”

 

“Clint!” Coulson called. “Rhodes?”

 

Thor stated the obvious when he said, “Our communication contraptions are not functioning!”

 

“Looks like it’s up to us!” Cap nodded at Thor and the two Iron Men. “North, south, east, west,” he said, pointing at each in turn. “Run—fly! Keep going until you outrun the wind!”

 

A tornado started to lift Steve up off his feet. Thor snagged his boot like a kite string and yanked him back down. Coulson snatched a tire rolling by and tossed it to Cap. “Should keep you weighed down!” he explained.

 

“Won’t do it,” said a familiar voice for the first time in what felt like forever. The silver and red Iron Man smacked the tire aside and grabbed Cap’s left arm. “Hold still.”

 

Steve’s eyes traveled up the Tower. “Tony?” The Iron Man flicked open a small panel on the underside of the Vibramag gauntlet. Deft fingertips clicked a series of dime-sized buttons. Steve felt strange. His shield felt heavier. Heavier and heavier and heavier until he had to hold it with both hands. Eyes still on the Tower, he shouted, “Stark, what the hell is going on?”

 

“Without boring you with the details, I’m using the magnetic charge to increase the weight of the shield. Should keep you on the ground. In fact, you couldn’t let go of the shield now if you tried. I wouldn’t want you to blow away, Dorothy.”

 

Steve Rogers didn’t miss the proper pronoun. Neither Thor nor Coulson had forgotten that the coms were no longer working. Both took a step back when Cap’s face went beet-red. With a wordless grunt of frustration, Steve yanked off the suit’s silver facemask. Tony Stark greeted him with an innocent smile and said, “Hey, I need that!”

 

Coulson, Thor, and Stark braced themselves for the wrath of Captain America. Steve’s hands balled into fists. His posture straightened to its maximum so that he nearly towered over Tony. He opened his mouth to shout both over the windstorm and their protests. And then—to everyone’s shock, including his own—Steve deflated. Not unlike the gigantic parade balloons now draped over buildings or stuck under cars, his shoulders slumped and his face drooped. Tears entered his eyes.

 

“No, no,” Stark stuttered, “be mad, not sad!” Tony lifted Steve’s right hand and pretended to slap his own face with it. “Be mad!”

 

Steve started jogging west without another word.

 

Phil nodded at Tony and fired his repulsors. Tony sighed and held his hand out towards Thor who grasped his forearm. “We will reunite soon,” Thor promised.

 

Stark nodded. “Meet back at the Tower. Good luck.”

 

Thor winked. “We need no luck; we’re Avengers!”

 

The tornado entity reared up in surprise when the four Avengers took off. Its four limbs snaked after each, in each direction. The Enhanced stretched itself as long as it could—so long that it ceased sensing its own form. Nature’s wind came in from the water and dissipated the shape even more. Soon it was just a puff—an exhale. Not long after, it was just a bodiless consciousness hovering outside the Tower. And not long after that it was gone for good.

 

Thor only ran for eight blocks. Coulson and Stark flew 12 and 18 blocks, respectively. Steve could’ve stopped running after ten.

 

He didn’t stop at 20. Didn’t stop at 40. Only at 60 did he finally burn off the raw emotions and turn around to limp slowly back to the Tower on his injured foot…

 

\---------

 

A frowning Bruce Banner woke up on the glass-strewn lab floor. Familiar fingers combed through his hair. “Natasha,” he whispered. Warm, soft skin grazed his forehead. Her lips, he realized. They looked extra red, extra plump when he opened his eyes and saw how close her face was to his.

 

“You didn’t hurt anyone.”

 

“Did I hurt anyone?” Bruce asked before he registered that she’d already answered his question. “Oh.”

 

“Think you can sit up?”

 

He sat up, but only with her help.

 

“Think you can stand?”

 

“Give me a second.” Bruce rubbed his eyes with both fists and counted to one hundred. “Ok.” He stood up, but only with her help. Also with her help he slid into the spare pants and button-down shirt he kept in the lab. He’d forgotten shoes, though, and waited—patiently—while Natasha retrieved a pair from his quarters. She forgot socks, but he waved his hand when she started offered to double back.

 

Bruce and Natasha joined Pepper, Happy, and Maria at the Tower’s broken windows. Below, the citizens of New York City heard the silence in the streets and started to peek their heads out of restaurants and shops and dumpsters. Distant sirens began to wail. All heads turned at the familiar sound of an approaching Iron Man. The suit landed in the lab the same time that Thor, pulled by Mjolnir, came home. “Behold the champion of the day!” The God of Thunder lifted Coulson’s hand high above his head. “We owe our victory to the son of Coul who outwitted that Enhanced!” Phil smiled sheepishly when Hogan, Hill, and Potts clapped and congratulated him.

 

Whooshing sounds outside. Sam Wilson soared into the Tower with only a wing and a half in working order. “Phew!” he exclaimed when he took his goggles off and tossed them aside. “Are we expecting more of those mutant things? Cuz that was wild.”

 

More sounds. War Machine flew inside with a green-faced archer. Natasha was almost too late with the trashcan. She barely got it under Clint in time for him to vomit. “You worked in a circus and you’re a pilot,” Hill reminded him. “Can’t imagine anything would make you nauseated at this point.”

 

Clint raised his middle finger at her. With his head still in the trashcan he groaned, “Tornado…”

 

Rhodey removed his helmet. He wore an empathetic half-smile. “Took a little longer to stop spinning then I’d like to admit…”

 

Clint aimed his finger at Rhodes and puked again. “That’s his way of thanking you for not dropping him,” interjected Natasha.

 

“Ugh…” Barton moaned.

 

Engines approached. The group scattered when Tony decided to land right in the center of them. Pepper flung her arms around his neck and kissed him even before the faceplate was off. “I’m so mad you,” she told him, grinning with relief. “You’re sleeping on the couch for a—for a… Forever!”

 

“Yes! Anger! Proper response to Stark shenanigans,” said Tony. He tossed his helmet at Happy and patted down his sweaty hair. “Have I told you yet today that you look hot?” he asked his girlfriend. She kissed him again. “Is Rogers back?” Each person looked around the room even though they all knew Steve wasn’t there. “Thor, pal, do me a favor? Go look for him—do you mind?”

 

Thor shouldered Mjolnir and cocked a blond eyebrow. “Is there cause for alarm?”

 

Tony sidestepped the question with a shrug. “I’d appreciate it, pal.” Tony then asked JARVIS to have shawarma delivered ASAP. Then he gave Pepper another kiss. And then he started walking towards the elevator. He pushed the ‘UP’ button and, with his back to the group, called, “Banner, do you mind? Got a question for you.”

 

Bruce avoided everyone’s gaze and jogged into the elevator behind his friend. The doors chimed when they closed, and Bruce asked, “What’s the rumpus?”

 

Tony removed his gauntlets and tossed them in the corner of the elevator. “Think I… I…” he stammered. Stark leaned back against the wall and clawed fruitlessly at his chest. Bruce took the hint and started peeling the armor off using the manual overrides. He did the same with each arm, each leg, and the feet. The second the armor was off (not one moment before), Tony silently slid down the wall and landed on his ass. He gripped his head with both hands and groaned.

 

“JARVIS, infirmary!” Bruce bellowed. He knelt and hugged Tony’s shaking knees against his chest.

 

“JARVIS, penthouse!” Tony overruled. He started to slump to the side. Bruce caught his cheek with one hand. “I’m good,” Tony whispered. “Really. Just… Just help me lie down.”

 

“I’ll get Pepper.”

 

“No.” Tony gripped Bruce’s collar with stiff fingers. “They’re so—I mean, she’s already so… Concerned. Bruce.” Glistening sweat turned into rivulets that flowed down Tony’s face. “Just gotta lie down for a while. A little while. I’m good.”

 

“Tony…”

 

“I’m good.”

 

Bruce knew not to waste more breath arguing. He helped Tony stand and gently pulled the inventor’s arm across his shoulders. “Easy, Tony.”

 

“Steve did something weird,” Stark wheezed. “He saw me in the field and didn’t break my nose. Must be coming down with the flu or something.”

 

“Or something,” Bruce sighed.

 

“I hate that sound.”

 

“What sound?”

 

“That you-should-know-the-answer-to-your-own-question-Tony sigh. Irritating, Banner.”

 

Bruce sighed again—and instantly blushed under Tony’s glare. “Wasn’t aware that I have a specific sigh. What else do my sighs tell you?”

 

“Don’t change the subject, Banner.” The elevator doors opened, and the two men entered the Penthouse on three legs. Tony’s left knee was tired. “Bruce…”

 

“If he didn’t yell at you for putting yourself in danger this time, then he probably never will again.”

 

“It’s not just that he didn’t yell, he looked… Resigned.”

 

“Yeah,” Bruce said, as if that confirmed his theory perfectly. “Yeah.”

 

Tony groaned as Banner helped him sit on the side of the king-sized bed. “You agree with my diagnosis, Doctor?”

 

“Sounds like Steve’s resigned to the fact that, no matter what, you’re going to put yourself in danger one way or another. We all are. There’s no use griping at each other about it anymore. Steve’s accepted it.”

 

“Accepted what?”

 

“That you—that we—are probably going to die.”

 

**To Be Continued**


	18. The Bet

**ONE MONTH LATER**

 

Bruce wasn’t surprised to find Tony in the lab at 5am. Banner was dressed for the day, but Tony wore pajama pants and a navy t-shirt under a white lab coat. Both feet were bare. His five o’clock PM shadow was now a five o’clock AM shadow. Bruce knew all of that meant one of two things: 1) Tony had gone to bed but got up again in the middle of the night or; 2) he didn’t sleep at all. Either way, Banner knew his friend would need coffee, and asked JARVIS to brew some. Tony didn’t look up from his tablet until the scent of Sumatra caught his attention.

 

“Thought you were going to wait for me to work on Veronica 2.0,” Bruce said, handing Tony a mug. Tony turned his tablet off, but not before Bruce got a look at it. “You’re already on 3.0?”

 

“Yeah, sort of.” Tony took a long sensuous drink—closing his eyes as he did so. “More like… 4.0.”

 

Bruce approached a transparent white board layered with equations and blueprints. “Why are you working on this when we need the new Quinjet up and running for the mission tonight?”

 

“Oh, it’s ready.” Tony rubbed his hands together and grinned. “And it’s been Stark-ified. Stark-ed out… Ironed? Ironed… Down?”

 

“Let me guess: you installed JARVIS.”

 

“And cupholders.”

 

“JARVIS and cupholders.”

 

“And a minifridge for victory beers we can drink on our way home. And autopilot so we don’t crash while we’re drinking.”

 

Bruce chuckled fondly. “Thought of everything, didn’t you?”

 

“There’s a closet for you to fill with as many pairs of pants as you want. You’re not sitting bare ass on brand new leather seats.”

 

“Guess you shouldn’t have put leather seats in my bedroom here.”

 

**_BEEP_**.

 

Both scientists turned towards a large computer screen in the northwest corner of the lab. The name ‘Lazarus’ flashed on the screen. “Ten bucks says he’s calling to gloat,” said Stark.

 

Banner approached the screen. “Good morning, Agen— _Director_ Coulson.”

 

Phil’s smiling face appeared on the screen. “Good evening from my time zone, Dr. Banner. I was just going to leave a message—didn’t think anyone would be up yet.”

 

Tony went to Bruce’s side and leaned his elbow on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re calling to gloat, aren’t you?”

 

Phil touched the black tie above his heart, feigning insult. “Mr. Stark, I’m the director of SHIELD. I don’t have the time or the energy to waste on gloating about how amazing my team is and how we’re going to win this bet by a mile… How we took down two more HYDRA sites in the past 48 hours which means that we’ve conquered 12—count it—12 more bases than the Avengers have.”

 

Bruce and Tony shared a look of cocked eyebrows and pursed lips.

 

Phil tapped a forefinger against his lips. “If I was an Avenger, I’d be pretty embarrassed if a bunch of no-name mortal agents without superpowers find Loki’s scepter first.”

 

“Are you done?” Tony wondered.

 

“Almost.” Phil winked. “When we win this bet and you’re my slave for a week, Stark, I think I’ll begin by having you clean an outhouse with a toothbrush. Have you ever cleaned a bathroom in your life?”

 

Bruce pressed his lips against his fist and snickered. Tony folded his arms and, scowling, said, “When _we_ win this bet and I get to be the Director of SHIELD for a week, Coulson, I think I’ll begin by making you _live_ in an outhouse.”

 

“Why can’t one of you just owe the other a steak dinner like a normal person?” Bruce swiped open his own tablet and accessed their map of known HYDRA bases. “All right. Which bases did you guys get?”

 

“Sydney, and the infiltrators at the CDC. You were right about HYDRA working on a biological weapon there, Dr. Banner,” Coulson told him.

 

“Weaponized small pox?”

 

“Weaponized _everything_.” Phil shuddered. “The reason why I called—other than to gloat—is to tell you that we captured a high-ranking HYDRA agent and we’re transferring him to the Tower.”

 

“Did you interrogate him yet?” asked Stark.

 

Coulson shook his head. “I think Barton might want to have a sit-down with this one. One of my agents will be there in a couple hours.”

 

\---------

 

Clint Barton stood outside the broom-closet-turned-interrogation-room with his back against the wall and his arms folded against his chest. Steve stood across from him, mirroring his position, and analyzing the archer’s posture and facial expressions. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Barton.”

 

Clint didn’t take his eyes off his boots when he said, “It should be me.”

 

“I can go in there with you. Or wait for you out here.”

 

Clint waved his hand. “Don’t bother. I know you and Thor have training this morning. My room’s next door to the gym now so try not to take out a wall when the lightning ricochets off the shield.”

 

Cap smirked and said, apologetically, “No promises.” He paused. “You sure you’re good?”

 

Clint made eye contact. “Awkward question: when Barnes betrayed you, did you feel like punching his teeth out one by one?”

 

A slight grimace graced Steve’s lips. “Bucky was brainwashed. Your buddy Bloom knew exactly what he was doing when he chose HYDRA over SHIELD.” Cap reached out and patted Clint’s shoulder. “I don’t envy you.”

 

Clint entered the closet with his chin up and his chest out. His ex-best friend looked worse than he did the last time they met. A knife slash shaped vaguely like a star stretched from his left ear up to the ginger hair on the right side of his forehead. He wore all-black fatigues and blood-stained boots. “Barton, old buddy!” John Bloom greeted. “I know I still owe you 20 bucks from that Poker game. How about I give you 50 and you let me walk out of here?”

 

Clint reached behind two brooms and a mop for a folded aluminum chair. He double checked the shackles and duct tape around Bloom’s wrists and ankles before he sat down. “Have you eaten?”

 

Bloom rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Coulson had a buffet for me. There was fresh shrimp.”

 

Barton nodded his chin at the cut. “Need that stitched up?”

 

“I like blood. Brings out the color of my eyes.”

 

The pair stared at each other. Neither man averted his gaze for a good five minutes. Finally, Clint said, softly, “You tried to kill my team.”

 

Bloom strained against his bonds. “It’s you I want dead. More than anything. More than anyone. You.”

 

Clint leaned back in his chair. “Why?” he whispered. “I’ve been wracking my brain, man. What did I do to piss you off so much?” To Clint’s surprise, Bloom’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I know it’s not about money. And I know you’re jealous that Fury assigned me to the Avengers Initiative instead of other sniper assassins like you, but that theory doesn’t hold enough water, does it, John?”

 

“You never looked at the list, did you?” Bloom alleged. “The list of the dead?”

 

Barton snorted. Couldn’t help it. “Which list?” he sighed.

 

“The Helicarrier. When you helped Loki escape and took out dozens of innocent agents in the process. 63 men and women died that day, Barton. Want to guess how many of them were my friends?” Bloom’s body trembled like Bruce’s did before he transformed into the Hulk. “63.”

 

Clint recoiled as if bitten by a snake. “No, I didn’t read the list,” he said. “What would be the point? It was my hand on the gun, but it was Loki who pulled the trigger.”

 

“See, I don’t believe that!” Bloom bellowed. Spittle splashed across the closet. “I’ve seen you do the most astounding things. I’ve watched you become the man—the superhero you are today. And you’re telling me with a straight face that wasn’t your fault? You take no responsibility? Maybe if you would’ve tried harder to fight the brainwashing, we wouldn’t be sitting here!”

 

“I—”

 

“And what happened next? The Avengers let Loki go. He returned to Asgard with barely a scratch. No consequences. None delivered by us, his victims. SHIELD failed. SHIELD failed the world. Why am in on HYDRA’s side? Because your side shows too much mercy. Because when the Avengers let a bad guy go, _they became the bad guys_! This isn’t your story, Clint. You’re not the good guy anymore.”

 

Everything in the room looked like a weapon to Clint: the mop handle, the single lightbulb, the rags, even the overturned plastic bucket in the corner. He couldn’t help but imagine using every object to shut his ex-best friend the hell up. “So, it’s my fault that you threatened the lives of an entire troop of Boy Scouts? I held a gun to your head and made you join forces with Strucker? I forced you to try to assassinate Tony Stark and Steve Rogers?”

 

A shrug. A halfhearted shrug. “It was my hand on the gun, but it was you who pulled the trigger.”

 

The door behind Clint flew open and a redhaired figure stormed in. Natasha punched Bloom so hard between the eyes that he toppled backwards. His head slammed into the hard floor. One groan, a twitch of his fingers, and then he was out cold. Natasha pivoted back towards Clint, already speaking, but he was on his feet and leaving. Nat cursed, locked the closet behind her, and jogged down the hall after her partner. She caught up to him ten yards before the kitchen, and grabbed his elbow. “ _You know he’s full of shit_!”

 

She expected him to whirl around and start shouting, to shake off her touch and maybe even shove her. Instead, he froze. He said nothing. He didn’t look at her. Fine hairs on the back of Natasha’s neck stood at attention. She knew Clint Barton. This reaction was ten times worse than any other. “Call Laura.”

 

He turned, finally. Bloodshot eyes blinked lazily. “Now? Why? What’s wrong?”

 

Her hand slid down his forearm and interlocked their fingers. “Just call her.”

 

“Right now I’d prefer a whiskey and an hour with a punching bag.”

 

“Trust me,” Natasha whispered.

 

“I can’t talk to her. Not in this mood. Not when it’s killing me not to tell her about Phil.”

 

She squeezed his hand tight. “ _Trust me_.”

 

Clint scooped his cell phone out of his back pocket and ordered it to make the call. After bouncing off a dozen satellites and requiring three passwords, the call connected. “Honey,” he said. “Hi, honey.” Natasha watched her partner’s face as the husband and wife spoke. The second Laura told Clint the good news, his entire body shifted. Stiff shoulders relaxed. Joints loosened. The deep lines on his face disappeared. “I think ‘Natasha’ is a great name for a baby girl,” he said, smiling.

 

\---------

 

The team gathered on the couches for the briefing after dusk. Everyone but Cap wore their civilian clothes. And everyone but Cap was still munching on their dinner—plates carefully balanced in their laps, bottles of water and cans of energy drinks on the table between them. Tony slurped spaghetti. Nat munched on a salad topped with grilled chicken. Bruce finished off a sub overflowing with every meat and vegetable he could fit, and Clint conquered a pasta dish of spinach, tomatoes, apple slices, and pork. Thor finished his steak and potatoes without using a knife or fork.

 

Bruce had rolled over their largest mobile monitor. Steve stood beside it, tapping his foot, waiting impatiently for his teammates to finish eating. “Here’s what we’re in for,” he eventually announced. He aimed a small remote and pushed a blue button. A satellite view of South America appeared on the screen. Tally marks sat in the top right corner. There were more marks next to Coulson’s name than Stark’s. Steve briefly glared at Tony before continuing. “Our intel has been confirmed. There’s a HYDRA base hidden in the Pacific. And, thanks to Romanoff interrogating our guest before he was shipped off to the Raft, we now know that there’s more there than expected. If what Bloom said is true, it’s where Strucker is hiding Loki’s scepter.”

 

Tony clapped his hands once, then pointed both thumbs at his chest. “We’ll win the bet! New director of SHIELD: right here.”

 

“We defeat HYDRA! Get your priorities straight, Stark,” Steve snapped. An extra curtness in the Captain’s voice kept Tony from a sarcastic response. Not only did he not reply, he sat up straight in his seat. The other four Avengers mirrored him. To everyone’s surprise, Cap took a deep breath, met his teammate’s eyes, and said, “Sorry.” Steve hit the button again and continued to speak before anyone could react.

 

An aged brick building with arches made wood and one iron tower appeared on the screen. “Here’s what we know. This is the central structure of the Erimi campus: 60 buildings that make up what SHIELD thought was a private, independent, self-sustaining observatory with massive satellites, research facilities, and living quarters.” The image zoomed out to a bird’s eye view of every building—all wood and brick, half very much in need of maintenance. Jeeps and groups of armed soldiers meandered down dirt roads while men and women in white lab coats carried boxes of equipment in and out. Snipers aimed from tall wooden watchtowers situated every ten yards around the fenced perimeter. “HYDRA might be observing space, yes, but more likely than not this is a cache of weapons and science experiments. Maybe even more Enhanced. Our job is to neutralize this threat. We’re leaving tonight because of the location—it’s on an atoll 50 kilometers south of Easter Island.”

 

Bruce raised his hand halfway but spoke before Steve acknowledged him. “There’s nothing but water 50 kilometers south of Easter Island. There’s nothing but water anywhere near Easter Island!”

 

“SHIELD can cloak jets and Helicarriers,” said Stark, “which means there’s no reason why HYDRA can’t cloak a small island.”

 

“Nowadays we can cloak just about anything we want to.” Nat elbowed Clint’s arm. “Remember your 34th birthday?”

 

“In Prague?” Clint rolled his eyes. “Nat and Coulson stole some mobster’s wedding cake and snuck it into our safehouse. They put it on the kitchen table, cloaked the whole thing—”

 

“The whole table!” Natasha clarified.

 

Clint nodded, smiling. “I come out of the bedroom, head straight for the fridge—I forgot the layout of the place—and WHAM. Smacked crotch-first into the table.” The dudes in the room all winced. “10 tiers of cake on the floor.”

 

“And my shoes,” Nat reminded him.

 

Steve set the remote down. Everyone braced themselves for a stern talkin’-to about focus and priorities and probably something about patriotic duty. Instead, Cap sat on the couch beside Thor and asked, “What flavor?”

 

Clint hesitated, then said, “Every flavor. Vanilla on top. Chocolate on the bottom. Coconut, raspberry, other stuff in between.”

 

“Tragic. Want to know what my parents had for a wedding cake?” Steve hesitated. “Oatmeal.”

 

“Plain oatmeal?” Bruce wondered.

 

“Bit of cinnamon.”

 

“My wedding is going to be a freaking international holiday,” Tony proclaimed. “Seriously. I’ll pay everyone in the world a day’s wages so that they can have the day off work to celebrate.”

 

Thor stared at him. “Are there not 7 billion people on this planet?”

 

Tony winked at him.

 

“Where will this epic wedding of yours be?” asked Bruce. He braced his elbow on his thigh, leaned his chin into his palm, and smiled at his friend, amused.

 

Tony gave it a moment of thought. Then, turning to Thor he asked, “What’s the going rate on Asgard to rent out your father’s castle for a weekend—or for a week?”

 

“You want to get married on an alien planet?” Steve chuckled.

 

“I want to get married somewhere _exotic_.”

 

Clint spread his arms, palms up, imploring. “Hawaii!”

 

“That Zealand you have. The new one. Most impressive,” said Thor.

 

“I think I’ve been to every beach on every continent,” Bruce said. “I can give you a top ten list right now.”

 

“We can check out Easter Island tomorrow,” Natasha reminded them.

 

“New Jersey.” Everyone—even Thor—turned to stare at Steve. He didn’t let on for a quarter of a minute that he was joking. So, when his poker face transformed into a smile, the whole room broke out in a raucous laughter. Beeps erupted from Steve’s watch. “Time to go,” he announced. “It’s a long flight to Easter Island.”

 

Tony gestured at the screen. “What, no detailed plan? No maps? No trust fall exercises or vocabulary quizzes or lectures about who’s responsible for what?”

 

“We land. We spread out. We find the scepter. That’s the plan.” Steve looked everyone in the eye with one sweep of his unblinking gaze. “We’re ready for this. I trust all of you. Trust your judgment. I trust your ability to read the situation, improvise, and to cover one another’s 6. We don’t need to go in with everything figured out. In fact, this will be such a long trip that we can open those beers in the Quinjet minifridge now.” Steve held his fist up and bumped it against Tony’s as he walked towards the hangar. “Avengers, assemble!”

 

Natasha followed Steve into the Quinjet while everyone else went to get suited up. She found Cap already buckled in his seat with his shield sitting in his lap. “Correct me if I’m wrong…”

 

Steve blinked at her. “I always do.”

 

“You’ve… _Relaxed_ around us. I just witnessed banter. Legitimate camaraderie.” Nat leaned against a bulkhead with her arms folded. “What happened to that stick up your ass, Grandpa?”

 

Steve winced at the visual. He smiled slightly—and that smile relaxed into an almost boyish grin. “Guess I’m finally able to give up a little… Control. We have a hell of a team here,” he said. That earned him a wider smile. “What?”

 

“You’re one of the few commanding officers I’ve had who uses ‘we’ regarding the team instead of ‘my.’ The Avengers are _our_ team.”

 

“Four alpha males managing to work as a team. Almost unheard of.”  

 

“Helps to have a super-genius for a Jiminy Cricket and a badass chick in the mix.” She turned to leave but before she did, she looked back over her shoulder and softly stated, “You’re not going to tell Tony about Barnes murdering his father.”

 

The boyish grin deflated. “I’m not going to tell Tony about Bucky murdering his father,” Steve confirmed.

 

“Why?”

 

“He’s been through enough. I don’t want to add to his pain.”

 

“Hope you won’t regret it.”

 

“I hope so, too.”

 

**To Be Continued**


	19. Blindsided

The repeating _thrum-puff-puff_ of an approaching helicopter stole John Bloom’s attention away from the rocking ocean waves. “About damn time!” he shouted when the flying black beast briefly blocked the afternoon sun before it descended directly onto the SHIELD ship’s deck. Gunfire. Laser fire. Punches and grunts and groans. Bloom stood tapping his foot at his barred cell door for another five minutes before his fellow HYDRA agents came below deck. “What took you so long?” he bellowed at Jackson, Delancey, Vizquel, and Doll. “We’re less than a mile from the Raft!”

 

Doll popped her bubblegum. “Geeze, Bloom, nice to see you, too.”

 

A silhouette came down the stairs behind them. A silhouette that Bloom recognized. His spread-legged stance of frustration deflated into a humble half-bow. “Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, Sir. I’m honored that you led my rescue.”

 

Strucker reached the floor, strode forward, stretched through the iron bars, and wrapped his hand around Bloom’s throat so tight the man immediately turned white. “I am not so thrilled to see you, Agent,” he growled. “Word from Erimi is that the Avengers are attacking. You wouldn’t happen to know how they found out about one of our top-secret bases, would you?”

 

A blush of embarrassed red mixed with Bloom’s oxygen-starved skin. “I had to tell them something, Lord Strucker. They want the god’s scepter! Of all our bases, Erimi has the least to lose. I’d never tell them about New Zealand or, God, Sokovia! I sent them on a wild goose chase.”

 

“Well, that wild goose chase of yours has backfired spectacularly!” Strucker roared. His monocle fell off his cheek and landed in his pocket. He yanked Bloom forward and the metal clanged when bone connected with it. “There’s a reason why HYDRA compartmentalizes its information! We don’t want any one person to know where everything and everyone is. But you, Bloom, you _idiot_ , you’re correct that the scepter isn’t at Erimi, but you know what is?”

 

Bloom could no longer shake his head or speak one syllable, so he ping-ponged his eyes from left to right.

 

“We smuggled the Phase 2 weapons off Fury’s Helicarrier, out of the crumbling Triskelion but now—now the Avengers will find them!” 

 

Bloom’s eyes widened from both surprise and suffocation. He tried and failed to speak, even when Strucker released him and he collapsed, dizzy, to the floor of his cell. “The five of you will go straight to Erimi,” Strucker ordered. He went back up the stairs but before he disappeared on deck, he called, “If you don’t come back with the Phase 2 weapons _and_ the Avengers’ heads, don’t bother coming back at all!”

 

\---------

 

The sky: cloudy, but not dark. The temperature: hot, but not humid. The wind: windy. Bad enough that Cap would have to compensate when he threw his shield. He made a mental note as he pulled the blue cowl over his head. “ETA?” he asked the Quinjet’s pilot.

 

“Three minutes,” Barton announced. Steve saw the archer’s eyes scan the instruments, and then the island below. “Got watchtowers—automatic weapons. The observatory and the labs are southwest. Living quarters northeast beside what looks like a pool, maybe 50 square yards, maybe their fresh water source?”

 

“Giant jacuzzi?” Tony Stark wondered. “Possibly for nude hot tubbing?” Natasha smacked his shoulder as she passed him to join Clint.

 

“I see an armory, garages, lots of labs. Guards on every street. Recommend we land behind the armory—it’s the widest structure on the southern coast.”

 

Steve plucked his shield out of storage and activated his magnetic gauntlets. “Your call, Barton.”

 

“Hey, Thor? I was thinking… You’ll probably head back to Asgard after we find the scepter, correct?” Tony asked.

 

The god of thunder shrugged. “It will be safer in my father’s vaults, so, yes. And it is still unclear who gave Loki the scepter in the first place. My next course of action should be to discover that identity.”

 

“Right. Well, I was thinking we should have a big celebration after we win the bet—I mean, after we track down HYDRA’s most dangerous weapon…”

 

Everyone looked at Steve. None were surprised when he rolled his eyes at Tony.

 

“Open bar, music, maybe a pool tournament. What do you think?”

 

Thor cocked his head to the side. “Pool… A swimming pool?”  

 

Natasha finished strapping on her fourth leg holster and looked out the window. “Look at that lighthouse by the pool. Are those things supposed to be on in the middle of the day?”

 

“A house that casts light?” Thor shouldered his hammer and joined the two assassins. Cap watched as a ray of light brighter than the noonday sun swept across the island in a wide, lazy horizontal arc. “What is its purpose?”

 

Bruce brought up a diagram on his tablet and held the image up for the Asgardian to see. “Lighthouses warn sea ships that there’s land nearby. Keeps the boats from running aground in shallow water.”

 

Thor pointed at the blue animation sparkling beneath and beside Banner’s diagram. “This house of light is on the edge of a cliff, on the coast. The structure below is in the very center of the island!”

 

Tony, who was sitting beside Bruce, called up the Quinjet’s front-facing camera on his own screen. “It’s a short one,” he observed. “Tower’s barely taller than the observatory. Most of the light would be blocked by the buildings—and, look! Look what direction it’s going in.”

 

Natasha noticed it, too. “It’s pointing down.”

 

“Bet that light barely reaches the water.” Clint checked his instruments before talking again. “Starting our descent.”

 

“It’s moving slow, too,” Banner noticed. “I’d estimate it takes five minutes to do a full rotation.”

 

Cap frowned and spoke up. “Is it just a spotlight?”

 

“Again—in the middle of the day?” Nat repeated.

 

“So? Some idiot forgot to flip a switch. What do we care if they run up their electric bill?” Tony held out his arms. A red and silver suit, summoned from a storage closet, drifted across the interior and attached itself to Tony’s body. “Don’t suppose that light is so bright I have to put my sunglasses on?”

 

Bruce shrugged. “JARVIS isn’t reading anything unusual.”

 

“Maybe avoid looking directly at it,” Cap recommended. He adjusted his cowl so that it blocked the upper half of his sight. 

 

“One minute,” said Clint. Natasha retrieved his bow and arrows.

 

Cap yanked on a lever and the ramp slowly shifted down. Shield ready, gun out, Steve nodded at his teammates. Tony and Thor flanked him. Bruce and Natasha lined up behind them. Clint landed the jet perfectly—a swan on a pond. All six Avengers jumped onto a rocky platform and jogged past tufts of brown grass and loose stones. They waited, backs pressed against the rear of the brick armory, for any flurry of activity or an alarm to indicate that some HYDRA agent saw them. Silence. With three hand signals, Cap told Tony to go to the roof, Natasha and Bruce to follow Thor to the left, and for Clint to come with him on the right. Tony fired his engines in short, quiet bursts. He hopped onto the brick roof, looked around, then gave the team a signal. The other five moved forward. 

 

Rogers and Barton found a side door—a black slab of aluminum with a wide window. Steve peeked inside the armory. He counted eight guards, and communicated the number to the team. Then, he waited patiently for Thor and Natasha to get to the front door. At Nat’s signal, both doors were kicked open. A bullet ricocheted straight off Cap’s shield and went through the shooter’s throat. Clint, who slid into the scene on his knees, took out the next guard with a taser arrow. Thor took a protective stance in front of Natasha and she fired her guns around his body, taking out two more. Guard number five snuck out from behind a shelf full of boxes of grenades. He would’ve put a bullet in Rogers or Barton, but Tony’s repulsor launched him across the room. The final three dropped their guns and dropped to their knees, hands up, when Thor raised Mjolnir over their heads. Tony dropped through the skylight. Banner moved inside and the pair of them lined up the conscious HYDRA agents against the wall. Bruce took zip ties out of his pockets and ordered the prisoners to tie up their own hands and feet.

 

The entire attack took less than 15 seconds.

 

“Well done, team,” Cap complimented. “Tony, weld every door shut.” Steve took out a gun and handed it to Banner. “You good staying here? Watching the prisoners? Shoot anyone who comes through that skylight.”

 

Bruce held the gun with two fingers like it was a dead fish. “Anyone but you,” he clarified with an amused smile.

 

“Preferably.”

 

“Question.” Clint knelt beside the dead guard who wore what looked like steampunk goggles, dark and wide—almost like a snorkeler’s mask. “What’s with the headgear?” Every Avenger looked at the POWs for an explanation. The three guards, who also wore the thick glasses, stared at the floor. Clint took the goggles off, looked through them, then shrugged. “Nothing special as far as I can tell.”

 

“Fashion statement,” Stark concluded.

 

“We should not allow ourselves to be distracted by such trivialities,” Thor reminded the group. He waved Tony’s open palm aside and jumped through the skylight with an effortless leap.

 

Nat let Tony scoop her up, bridal style. Tony carried Barton, too, then went back for Cap. “Code Green ready if you need me,” Bruce said.

 

“Copy that.” Steve gave his teammate a salute, and Tony carried him out.

 

The lip around the brick roof was just tall enough for everyone to crouch behind. Cap glanced sideways at his teammates, gathered his thoughts, and said, “Call it, Romanoff.”

 

Natasha didn’t hesitate. “The scepter could be anywhere, so let’s check everywhere. We should split up. Whoever finds it should boot it to the Quinjet ASAP. The rest of us can cause a distraction.”

 

“You want the watchtowers?”

 

“Barton and I can take them out quick and quiet.”

 

“Where do you want me?”

 

“Quarters. Most of the personnel are probably there. Thor should take the observatory—looks heavily guarded. So do the labs, and Tony will know what to shoot at and what to avoid. He won’t blow the island up.”

 

“No promises,” Stark muttered.

 

“All good, team?” Cap asked. “Ok, then. Avengers, assemble!”

 

Everyone took one step in their next direction. Each froze. “Uh, Steve, we’re kind of _disassembling_ now,” Tony chuckled.

 

“Have I told you recently that you’re a pain in my ass?” Steve hissed, smiling.

 

“Twice today!” Tony briefly rested his gloved hand on Steve’s shoulder, then busied himself with shuttling everyone back down to the ground.

 

\----------

 

The sweeping light from the lighthouse caught up with them a minute later. It hit Steve first. He was weaving between buildings, dodging guards, managing to remain unnoticed—unnoticed until he turned a corner and looked directly into the light. He found out instantly—the hard way—why everyone else on the island was wearing goggles. His gasp of surprise echoed over the coms. His shout of pain followed. Five voices called his name, but the pain was louder. The shield fell. Steve followed it. His knees bruised on impact.

 

Natasha cried out next. A squeak, a squeal, a low growl, and then a series of frustrated, pained gasps. Clint bellowed out three full sentences of curse words. The first was a reaction to hearing his partner in pain. The sudden spike of pain behind his eyes was to blame for the second two.

 

“Nat!” The Avengers heard Bruce trying to punch his way out of the armory. “Nat, what—” Bruce’s shout of pain sounded uncomfortably close to the Hulk’s roar.

 

Tony leapt into the air and hovered above the lab he was about to enter. “Somebody talk to me!” Iron Man bellowed. “What’s going on?”

 

“The lighthouse,” Steve managed, “don’t look at the light. It blinded me—I can’t see!” Steve gripped his head hard between his hands. “Guys, I’m down!”

 

“I am, as well!” Thor’s voice sounded muffled, like he had his head between his knees. “I am unable to see. I am unable to—” Grunts, gasps, sounds of fists against flesh.

 

The wailing started. A high-pitched scream of an alarm so loud that every glass window vibrated. Armed guards emerged from every corner of the island, and the lighthouse pulsed like a strobe light. Tony didn’t look away in time. The light was on him—in him—through his eyes and beyond… But he could still see. “JARVIS?” he whispered.

 

 _The faceplate, Sir_ , the AI responded, _successfully refracted the radiation_.

 

Tony sighed, relieved. “Coming for you!” he shouted. “Everyone hang on. Bruce, don’t change.” Stark hit the ‘gas’ and exploded high into the air. “Banner, you hear me? Keep the Other Guy bottled up!”

 

“I’m trying!” Bruce groaned over the coms. “ _God_ —”

 

Bullets collided into Tony’s left knee. He loop-de-looped and flew north, scanning for the closest Avenger. Movement at a watchtower caught his attention first. Natasha lay on the tetrahedron roof of the tower at his 4:00. She clung to a naked flagpole, her body half hidden by the oceanside-facing plank. “Nat, stay where you are. They haven’t seen you—just hold on.”

 

“Nothing else to do,” she muttered.

 

Clangs over the coms. Tony looked over at the observatory just in time to witness Thor falling backwards through a window with four guys on top of him. They wrestled in mid-air and the god managed to get his body between them and the unforgiving ground. He swung Mjolnir like nunchucks. He flailed his other arm out in the opposite direction and, between the two weapons, managed to fend off the next batch of guards that tried to tackle him. Clint took on two guards in a watchtower on Tony’s left. Even blind, the archer managed to get enough of a grip on the pair of men to knock them both out of the nest. Their momentum dragged him, though, and Barton ended up hanging from the 50-foot-tall structure by four fingers.

 

“Barton, drop!”

 

The blind archer twisted toward the sound of Tony’s voice. “Are you shitting me?”

 

“I’m right below— _look out_!”

 

“Bad joke!” Clint yelled. Half a second later a bullet grazed his knee. Startled, unbalanced, Barton’s fingers slipped and he fell hard and fast. Tony dove. He caught Barton by the wrist and they landed side by side on the ground, the archer clinging to Iron Man as if for dear life.

 

“Where’s the rest of the team?” Clint demanded.

 

Tony didn’t hear him. 100% of his focus was on the lonely red, white, and blue Vibranium shield abandoned on the road. “Cap?” he called. “ _Steve_!”

 

A new sound. A hum, a crescendo. Tony turned to see half a dozen weapons pointing at Clint. He recognized them—Fury’s Phase 2 weapons. Stark put himself between Barton and the guns right when they went off. He felt himself soar up and backwards over Clint and he slammed face-first into the side of a brick building. The impact dislodged the suit’s facemask. Before Tony could slide it back on, the radioactive light hit him. Stark screamed.

 

“Tony!” The guards were on Clint. “Stark, get out of here!” Barton kicked and punched at every footstep he heard, but it wasn’t enough. Handcuffs and shackles subdued the archer and he ended up on his stomach in the dirt, cheek pressed against a sharp patch of brown grass.

 

Stark battled through the pain and found enough semblance of sanity to reattach the faceplate by touch rather than sight. “JARVIS,” he gasped, “retreat protocol! Get me back to the Quinjet!” The AI took possession of the suit and Iron Man blasted off seconds before a gaggle of guards tackled him. He didn’t get far. A satellite dish on top of the observatory suddenly rotated with an echoing squeak. A concentrated EMP blast enveloped Tony’s body. The suit went offline—completely failed—and he dropped, deadweight.

 

He was over the middle of the island when he fell—fell right into the large pool of water, and sunk. Blind, JARVIS-less, but still conscious, Tony started kicking his legs and flapping his arms. He had no idea how deep the water was. He had no idea if he was even swimming in the right direction. He had no idea how long he would last because the warped facemask failed to seal him completely. Drops of water like tears splashed on Tony’s cheeks. He tasted salt.

 

Something bumped against him. Or, he bumped against it. A wall? The floor. Tony tried to grab and missed.

 

Another bump. This time against his right hip. A third against his left shoulder. Either he was sinking into a narrow tunnel, or there were other objects in the saltwater, or…

 

Or something _alive_.

 

A coldness unrelated to the water trickled down his spine. Tony willed himself to imagine curious, playful dolphins nudging him with gentle noses. He imagined one letting him hitch a ride to the surface…

 

A jaw clamped around Tony’s arm. Metal crumpled. More saltwater poured in and something sharp scraped up his skin. Warm blood mixed with cold water and both stifled Tony’s throat when he started to scream.

 

\---------

 

“Pancakes!” Thor bellowed over the coms. “I mean—I mean, _Code_ Pancakes! Code _Green_ Pancakes!”

 

Bruce tapped his earpiece. “Thor, did you say Code Green?” Static. “Anyone on coms?” The static dissipated into silence. “Guys?” Banner punched the armory wall. If only he hadn’t been looking through the skylight when the lighthouse’s radiation passed over… The Hulk inside him clawed at its cage. The initial shock of blindness woke him up, but the absence of their friends’ voices pushed him into a frantic rage. Bruce turned in the direction he thought the prisoners were in. “Sorry about this,” he told them.

 

“Huh? What?” a disembodied, dizzied voice asked.

 

Bruce sighed. “Keep your heads down.” And then he closed his blind eyes and surrendered.

 

The Hulk slammed through the armory wall like a battering ram. Not only could he see, but he had the presence of mind to turn his back when the lighthouse’s gaze swept by.

 

Splashing in the distance. He heard the water only briefly before the sound of bullets ricocheting off his own hide. HYDRA agents converged on the Hulk and fired both semiautomatics and Phase 2 weapons. Hulk plunged through them towards the water, towards the scent of fresh blood. He ducked behind a building when the light swept by, then ran through the same building towards the pool. In the deep below, the Hulk’s favorite tin man floated, limp.

 

And floating beside him? Three sharks. Three great white sharks. Three Hulk-sized great white sharks.

 

The Hulk remembered a half-forgotten word. _Enhanced_. _Mean fish enhanced_ , he concluded. _Mean fish hurt Tony—bad fish! Hulk smash_! Hulk belly flopped into the water, fists thrashing.

 

**To Be Continued**

 


	20. Godsicle

 

The island didn’t feel as warm when Steve couldn’t see it. _Everything_ felt colder—especially the icy dread prickling through his skin when the HYDRA agents pinning him down with his own shield started cheering about Iron Man getting ‘shot out of the sky.’ Cap heard splashing water nearby—the shark tank, he realized—more cheering and then—a lifetime later—the rage-roar of the Hulk. Unforgiving hands yanked him to his feet. The group (Six guards? A dozen? Maybe more?) dove for cover through the garage entrance of a building that smelled to Cap like a hospital. Same cleaning chemicals, same laundry soap, same food, same nameless odor everyone associates with sickness and death. The guards took no chances with the super soldier. At least three of them had their full weight on him at all times, and Steve felt at least five more pairs of hands braced against his limbs. At his best he could throw them off and run but, blind, he knew that in the best case scenario he’d just end up running into a wall and knocking himself unconscious. In the worst case scenario he’d probably fall into the shark tank, hinder or distract one of his teammates, or walk right off the island and into the rocky Pacific Ocean to drown. So, Steve had the unbearable duty of waiting, of waiting _patiently_ , of listening to the guards’ observations and commentary, paying attention to the play-by-play as the Hulk battled to rescue Tony from, _for-the-love-of-God_ , Enhanced _sharks_.

 

“Oh! Blood geyser! That monster bastard bleeds green, too!” one laughed.

 

“Holy _shit_ , look at Gladys go! Mama shark is pissed!”

 

“The sharks might actually eat the Hulk… _Christ_ , that bite! They’re going to eat that thing!”

 

As one, the guards all shouted, “ _Ow_!” Cursing followed, and then a fourth voice exclaimed, “Asshole tore her fin off like a—shit— _duck_!” Someone pushed Steve’s head flat to the ground. He felt the air left in the wake of something flying over their heads into the building. “ _Was that Brutus’ head_?”

 

“Jesus—look at Brutus’ teeth up close!”

 

“Poor son of a bitch fish. Dude’s in pieces!”

 

Footsteps approached. Steve’s guards yelled at other guards. Frantic voices shouted about dodging Thor’s lightning. Less than a minute later the entire island quaked from a deafening explosion and Steve knew implicitly from the distinct smell of the smoke that Thor had blown up the entire armory. He wondered whether the blind god did it accidentally or as a purposeful tactical maneuver. Either way, at least most of the Phase 2 weapons were out of play…  Steve felt grateful before he remembered that he was still blind.

 

More splashing. Louder splashing. Liquid pooled beneath Steve’s cheek. The Hulk vs. sharks fight was sending small tsunamis out of the saltwater tank and across the entire base. There was a heat in it—blood, Steve realized. His artist’s imagination pictured the Hulk’s green blood mixing with the sharks’ red blood to make a sickly yellow: vomit plus piss. The guards ‘oooed’ and ‘ahhhed like sadistic spectators at a fight club when one half of a shark sailed west off the island and the other half went east.

 

A body slammed into the ground beside Steve. Cap recognized the groaning voice and his heart soared with relief. “Barton!”

 

“Cap?” Clint wheezed. He must have crawled closer because the captain felt fabric bump against his pinned wrist. “Steve, can’t see—what’s happening—what do we do?”

 

Steve would’ve shaken his head helplessly if he could. “Keep your head down,” he advised. “It’s up to the big guys now.”

 

Ringing metal nearby. “Fish out of water,” a guard sighed. “Shit, wow, look at his arm!”

 

“Is Stark alive?” one wondered. “How long was he underwater?”

 

“Real question is how long did he not have oxygen underwater!”

 

Clint’s voice went up an octave. “Steve? Steve, what’s going on?” Cap told him. The only reply Barton could muster was a squeak and the word, “ _Sharks_?”

 

One of Steve’s captors released him. Cap heard him stand up and step forward. “We have to get that Iron Man armor. Strucker will skin us if Stark ends up in the ocean.”

 

“Stark, if you can hear me, report!” the captain ordered. He twisted beneath the guards and took a punch to the nose for his effort. A hand clamped around his mouth. Steve bit it, and two more fists collided with his cheekbones. “ _Talk to me, Tony_!”

 

Shuffling around them. Steve struggled to figure out what was going on. He heard boots on the ground, scraping nearby, thunder in the distance. More voices than he could count shouted about evacuation plans and concerns about Thor’s lightning electrocuting them all if it hit the water they stood in. Steve smelled smoke and oil. The Iron Man armor was nearby. If only he could reach Tony’s hand…

 

Steve didn’t need to commentary to guess what happened next. He heard the sound of something large hitting something larger. Hulk roared, triumphant. Cracking, creaking, crumbling sounds started off in the distance and slowly got closer. Steve’s theory was confirmed when one of his guards sputtered, shocked, “List’s lab! There is goes. _Timber_!”

 

The Hulk threw the last shark _at_ _the lighthouse_.

 

The beast was so large, and the lighthouse was so old. It broke in half and crumbled. Brick dust _whooshed_ into Steve’s lungs. Voices screamed when the lantern landed only a few yards away and spat shards of glass in every direction.

 

\----------

 

Hulk emerged from the saltwater tank limping and bleeding from a dozen shark bites. He moaned, then collapsed first to his knees and then right onto his nose—directly on top of shattered glass. Bruce woke up coughing. Hulk’s body could handle water in his lungs, but Bruce was drowning in it. Banner vomited yellow water, then got to his knees and crawled forward to escape his own sick. Blinking, stinging, _seeing_ eyes recognized the island, the tank behind him, the decimated lighthouse, and the Iron Man suit yards in front of him. Bruce tried to speak but could only cough. He started crawling towards his friend, leaving both green and red blood in his wake. Salt stung his wounds. Half-healed bites in his right leg left the limb completely useless. In Bruce’s peripheral vision, nearly beyond his conscious comprehension, Thor wrestled with guards and dodged shots from Phase 2 weapons.

 

Bruce made it to Tony and gripped his friend’s shoulder. Water dripped out of the armor. Blood followed it, but not as much as Bruce expected / feared. The armor had taken most of the damage. Tony got bit, but the cuts were barely more than grazes. Apparently the suit was shark-proof. Bruce was more concerned about Tony’s limbs getting stuck in the mangled armor. Banner pried the facemask off, then the entire helmet. Tony was corpse-pale. A strained gurgling exited his mouth as the unconscious inventor struggled to breathe. Bruce rolled him onto his side. Fingers interlocked, fists flexed, angle right above Tony’s shoulder blades, Banner hammered down on the armor until the last of the water drained.

 

Guards emerged. Vision swimming, Bruce looked up and recognized the vague outlines of Steve and Clint. Merciless hands hoisted Bruce up by the armpits and dragged him, along with Tony, into the garage of a building that smelled like a hospital. Stark and Banner were deposited beside Cap and Clint, who fought even harder against their captors. Bruce was given a wider berth that the others. The cautious guards didn’t stop him when he slipped off Tony’s left gauntlet and guided the inventor’s hand into the captain’s one free hand. Steve recoiled from the unexpected touch at first, but then shaking fingers searched frantically for a pulse. “Tony’s alive, Clint,” he exhaled a minute later.

 

Blood leaked from Barton’s nose and lips. He sighed, relieved, and went limp under his captors.

 

“Doc?”

 

“I’m here, Steve,” Bruce coughed, “and I can see.”

 

“See anything interesting?”

 

“I, uh…” Bruce swayed on his knees. The soaking wet purple cut-offs he wore bunched up beneath his thighs. He resisted the temptation to search the watchtowers for Natasha. The last thing they needed was for her to get captured, too. “Thor’s hanging in there, but he’s outnumbered.”

 

“You don’t sound great.”

 

“Don’t feel… Don’t feel great. Hulk—He didn’t completely heal. I feel his pain and…” Bruce fought down another round of nausea. “Cap, I can’t… Won’t last much longer. Dizzy…”

 

“Any suggestions for us?”

 

Bruce looked around the building. He counted thirty guards. Thirty guards with fifty weapons between them. “No play here, Cap.”

 

“Understood.”

 

“Did you eat a shark?” Clint wondered.

 

“Probably.” Bruce sighed. Liquid rolled down his neck—sweat this time. “Guys, I don’t think…” Banner tried to stay awake. But his own injuries had caught up with him. He was going to faint, and knew it. “Shark almost ate me and I’m still bleeding and…”

 

“Bruce?”

 

Bruce lowered his head beside Tony’s. Better to put his head down now before it fell down…

 

\----------

 

Thor felt a rage that rivaled the Hulk’s. Feral desperation overtook him and he blindly shot lightning at the hands clawing at him. He heard shouts, splashing, curses aimed at him, and then both the noise and the sensation of the island vibrating. Chaos in the air. Chaos in his mind. His conscious told him to stop firing lightning, to stop because he was equally likely to hit his friends as his enemies, but his inability to see hampered his ability to _see_ that truth. But then two sounds cut through the pandemonium. First, the rumble of the destroyed lighthouse and, second, a cutting voice that drowned out all others and then silenced them. Thor bent his knees defensively and twirled the hammer with two fingers. The authority of the new voice must have been significant, because all of the HYDRA guards decided to stand down. Not one tried to jump on his back or trip up his feet.

 

“Do you recognize my voice, Thor?”

 

“Should I?” the god of thunder demanded. He aimed Mjolnir at the man, but didn’t throw.

 

“We spoke on the phone. Briefly. After New York. I’m Dr. List, the supervisor of this facility. I won’t take it personally that you don’t remember me. The members of the World Security Council like to keep an extra low profile.” Mjolnir twitched in his hand. It wanted blood as much as he. “Son of Odin, we are no longer on the same side. I’ve been curious to see if the so-called Phase 2 weapons would take you down, but I didn’t intend to test them like this.”

 

“You would rather have me as a lab cat in a cage?” Thor demanded.

 

“ _Rat_.” Thor heard the telltale pops of readied shotguns. “There’s something you should know.” Dr. List stepped closer. Thor envisioned an expensive watch, a pointed nose, and a white lab coat. “As we speak, my men have guns against your friends’ heads. If you don’t stand down now—and I mean _now_ —they will execute them one by one.”

 

“No!” Thor didn’t mean to say the word out loud but, having said it, he repeated it.

 

“Stand down,” List advised. “Stand down and hold still. We have something special planned for you.”

 

Thor doubted it was a cake and a hug. But, he was blind. He had no way of knowing where his comrades were or what situation they were in. It was very well likely that HYDRA had weapons on all five in that moment. So, Thor did the last thing he ever saw himself doing. He surrendered.

 

“Now there’s a good god,” List purred. “Drop the hammer.”

 

Thor sighed. He obeyed.

 

“Well done.” The voice got closer. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. My men are currently rolling up a cryogenic chamber. In case you are unfamiliar, know that it is painless, harmless. It will simply freeze your body in the precise state it is in. And, Thor, you are going to allow them to put you inside it.”

 

“I will hear my comrades’ voices, first,” the god demanded. “Assure me that they live.”

 

List snorted. “If that will ensure your cooperation then of course, as you wish.”

 

Thor waited. Minutes passed. Then he heard the sound of grunting, dragging limbs, and skipping, shuffling feet. “Speak,” List ordered. “Your teammate requires confirmation of your life.”

 

Steve Rogers’ voice was faint, but there. “Thor?”

 

“It is I, Captain. Are you all right?”

 

“More or less. Barton, Stark, and Banner are with me. You good?”

 

“I am uninjured. Still blind.”

 

“We are, too.”

 

“Satisfied?” List interrupted. “Thor?”

 

“Well enough.”

 

“Then hold still.”

 

Thor heard something heavy roll up behind him. He didn’t fight against the guards who guided him backwards into the cryo tube. “Swear no harm will come to my friends,” Thor said as the tube closed. He received no answer.

 

Dr. List slid his hands into his lab coat and smiled. “That, gentlemen, is how you defeat a god. I sense a promotion coming. Perhaps a transfer to Strucker’s compound…”

 

**To Be Continued**


	21. Party Protocol

Bruce woke up with both lungs full of cement. Breathing out felt painful. Breathing in felt worse. He coughed, then tried to hold his breath and force the sharp tingles to pass. Someone had stuffed him awkwardly into a dry uniform—a black HYDRA uniform complete with boots, he realized, and then reasoned that it was better than nothing. Heat under his left cheek turned out to be coming from the inside of Tony’s right knee. The crescent spaces beneath Stark’s eyes looked dark and stretched. His chew toy of an arm was bandaged up with what looked like both of Steve’s sleeves. Tony gently patted Banner’s cheek and whispered between bloodied, swollen lips, “You with us?”

 

Bruce swallowed. Both eyes watered from a sensation like porcupine quills down his throat. “You—” Banner choked, “you’re ok?” 

 

 “Mutated sharks. Whatever.” Tony shrugged. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

 

“None.”

 

“Good. At least one of us can see.”

 

“I can see that you look like crap.” Banner started to sit up, but dizziness forced him back down into Tony’s lap. Stark slid shaking fingers into Bruce’s hair and left them there. “Did you lose your suit _again_?”

 

Tony lowered his voice further than a whisper. “One will join us soon. Six, if you updated the house party protocol on Tuesday. You did, right?”

 

“Paint jobs might not be done. And they’re coming from the satellite, not your underwater mansion in Malibu. It’s a satellite party.”

 

“Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

 

“ETA?”

 

“Before they execute us, I hope.”

 

“Huh?” Bruce looked around. Clint and Steve flanked him and Tony on either side. Both were on their knees, hands behind their heads, three guns against their skulls. Nine more guards with 12 more guns surrounded the Avengers. Twenty yards away, just outside the island observatory, Thor lay frozen in the coffin-like cryogenic tube. Mjolnir sat sad and lonely in the dirt. Dr. List and half a dozen of the HYDRA leadership stood in a circle speaking softly to one another.

 

“There’s one problem about the satellite party protocol plan,” Tony whispered.

 

“Only one?” Bruce scoffed. “Is it that we haven’t tested it yet? Or that we haven’t even confirmed that your subcutaneous electronics can summon all six at the same time? Or that the sensors aren’t even in me or the others yet? Or that the team doesn’t know what we’ve been working on and it will be a complete surprise they’re not remotely prepared for?”

 

Stark snorted. “Liked you better when you were unconscious.” Bruce coughed, then. Tony waited patiently for the harsh spell to pass. He slipped his hand beneath the back of Bruce’s neck and grounded him with his touch. “Problem is that we need a distraction. Don’t want to get shot in the face before my legs are even on.”

 

“Code Green?”

 

“Need him to take out the EMP cannon. You feel up to it?”

 

“Not even a little.”

 

“Does the Other Guy feel up to it?”

 

“Don’t I get a suit? You said you called all six.”

 

“No offense, but you’re expendable because you literally _aren’t_ expendable. Romanoff, Barton, and Rogers are the priority.”

 

“So are you,” Bruce insisted.

 

Stark ignored the comment. “If we get in suits with JARVIS on autopilot it won’t matter that we’re blind, because he will see for us. Question is how do I direct each suit onto each person when I can’t see the suit or the person…!”

 

“Shhh!” Bruce hissed when Tony’s voice started to rise. “Maybe you won’t have to direct the suits. JARVIS knows who we are. He’s smart enough to differentiate between us and the bad guys. The suits didn’t target Rhodes when you guys rescued the president.”

 

“But they did go after Extremis-ed Pepper. JARVIS isn’t infallible. I am, of course, but he isn’t.”

 

Bruce felt some small percentage of his stress evaporate at the amused sparkle in his friend’s blind eyes. They were all about to get shot in the head, but at least Tony Stark still had his sense of humor. Some things, even in death, never changed.

 

\---------

 

Natasha squirmed. She’d been hanging onto the flagpole on top of a watchtower for who-knows-how-long, and her fingers were numb. She could see nothing, and barely hear anything. Nobody responded over the coms. More gunshots than she could count had echoed across the island. The armory blew up. The lighthouse collapsed. That was all she knew—all she would know until she got her sight back. Her boys could all be dead. When the blindness wore off she might look down from the watchtower and see their bodies. And what would she do then? What else could she do but take on every HYDRA agent as hard and fast as she could until they were all dead, or she was on the ground beside her team. Until then she had to hang on. Hang on for dear life—for her life, and for theirs.

 

Nat heard the familiar soaring whoosh behind her. Stark tech approached. That much she knew. But whether it was a missile or a blender, she couldn’t tell. And, merely out of habit, she turned towards it to see. She turned too fast. Numb fingers lost their grip. She scrambled as she slid but found nothing to grab. Natasha started to scream as she fell (her last thought was that her death might briefly distract the bad guys, giving her boys a split second of a chance to escape) but she didn’t fall far.

 

An intact Iron Man suit waited for her only ten feet beneath the watchtower. She fell backwards into it as if onto her mattress at the Tower. The tech folded around her, a snug fit but not too much so, and a familiar voice spoke in her ears. “Good afternoon, Agent Romanoff,” JARVIS greeted. “If I may answer your questions prematurely, Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner recently launched a satellite equipped with a variety of Iron Men. Mr. Stark can summon one using a simple gesture of his hands and arms. He called for the whole Avengers line, to be precise,” JARVIS explained in his clipped accented voice. “The other five suits are on the way. Specifically, the pieces of them which will all reassemble on contact into versions of the Mark 42.”

 

The Black Widow felt the floating suit realign itself so that her feet pointed at the ground. “JARVIS, I—an Avengers line? 42’s? You mean—you mean the type of suit that comes completely apart? _That one_?”

 

“That is correct.” A brief pause preceded the question, “Are you unable to see, Agent Romanoff?”

 

“None of us can see! Why the hell do you think I was hiding up here?” Hope flared in Natasha’s heart. Excitement followed it. “JARVIS, report! Can you see Stark and the others?”

 

“Affirmative.”

 

Natasha waited a beat. “Well? _And_?”

 

“I have identified each Avenger, yes.”

 

“I mean, tell me what they’re doing! What’s happening down there? Are they all right?”

 

JARVIS gave her the details, then said, “Agent Romanoff, I suggest that you relinquish the mission to my discretion until you or another Avenger regains sight.”

 

Nat didn’t care that the AI could see her roll her eyes at him. “Brilliant.”

 

“Do I have your consent? I require authorization in order to be autonomous—”

 

“Yes!” Nat shouted. “You have my permission to stick everyone in suits and get us the hell out of here!”

 

“Understood.” The suit rose higher in the air. “I suggest you relax, Agent Romanoff.”

 

“Yeah,” Nat said to the complete darkness in front of her eyes. “Just take a nap?”

 

“Perhaps this is not the appropriate time to be unconscious unless, of course, you become unconscious against your will—”

 

“ _JARVIS_!”

 

“Beginning initial assault.”

 

\----------

 

Although Bruce told himself to expect it, he still failed to hold still when a piece of Stark’s armor dropped out of the sky and fastened onto his leg. He looked down, expecting to see his personal color scheme of green and purple. Laughter bubbled up. The sound doubled in volume when a gauntlet landed on his arm.

 

Stark perked up at the sound of Iron Man armor whizzing in. He lifted Bruce up into a sitting position and himself onto his haunches. “Banner? Is there a reason for the laughter?”

 

“Pieces are mixed up. I have Barton’s left leg and Natasha’s right arm.”

 

“How’s the paint job?”

 

“Violet looks good with the silver but there’s too much black and too little red on Nat’s.”

 

“Noted.”

 

A helmet descended straight onto Bruce’s head. “Greetings, Dr. Banner. If you would be so kind as to defend the others while I outfit them?” JARVIS requested.

 

A bullet ricocheted off Bruce’s protected arm. “Dammit!” he bellowed. Every HYDRA agent who witnessed the falling armor cocked and pointed their weapons. Scrambling, panicking, Bruce got to his knees and raised his fists as if ten fingers could protect his three teammates from hundreds of bullets.

 

A rush of wind. An entire Iron Man suit dropped into the fray and fired its repulsors. “Guys?” Natasha shouted over the sound of the lasers. “Guys, are you here?”

 

Clint and Steve dove towards Bruce and Tony and crouched around them. “Stark, talk to us!”

 

“Don’t worry your little head, Cap.”

 

“ _Tony_!”

 

“JARVIS has everything under control!”

 

Bruce shoved Steve’s head down an inch. A bullet nicked the captain’s earlobe. “Brace yourselves because you’re about to put on the armor whether you like it or not!” The remaining pieces of a suit finished assembling around Bruce’s body. The helmet’s HUD triggered Banner’s memory when it scanned the island for additional threats. “There’s an EMP cannon, JARVIS! Find it and destroy it!”

 

“Scanning…” Lights blinked in Bruce’s peripheral vision. “Identified. Aligning weapons.” He left that task to JARVIS and busied himself with shooting at every HYDRA goon he saw. With his back to Natasha’s the pair perfectly protected the three men clustered between them.

 

A minute later, Tony popped up onto his feet wearing a complete suit. “We need to rethink the design of my faceplate,” Banner said when he saw his helmet on Tony’s head. “Looks like a frog.”

 

“Ugh,” Stark groaned.

 

Barton and the captain stood, completely equipped. Both tested out the armor by stretching their legs and flexing their arms. Bullets bounced off Clint’s back and he didn’t seem to notice. “Liking this,” Clint said with a grin in his voice. “But not a fan of the puppet part.” Barton turned towards Tony. “What’s the plan?”

 

Tony sighed. “Let me handle this, guys.” In his most authoritative tone, Stark ordered, “Finish this mission, JARVIS. Make sure every Phase 2 weapon is out of commission, and tell us right away if you find the scepter!”

 

“Acknowledged.” JARVIS raised five pairs of hands and aimed them at the next rushing round of soldiers.

 

Bruce yelped when JARVIS suddenly twisted him towards the observatory. Without his consent, a flap on his chest piece opened and a finger-sized missile soared out. It took out the observatory’s peak, sending a rainfall of bricks down on the whole island. “EMP cannon eliminated,” JARVIS announced with a hint of pride in his voice. “Phase 2 weapons all destroyed. No indication of the scepter or additional alien technology.”

 

“ _Shit_ ,” Tony bellowed over the coms.

 

“Double shit!” said Banner. “Heads up, team. Helicopter inbound.”

 

The black helicopter approaching from the south was the largest JARVIS had ever recorded. He reported that it was the six times the size of the Quinjet and armed with every weapon imaginable. “Mr. Stark, Sir, I suggest an immediate retreat!”

 

“Bruce?” Tony called to the only one of them with sight. “Banner, do we stand a chance?”

 

Bruce never got the chance to answer. None of them got another word in. The helicopter had its own EMP cannon, and the pulse knocked out all five suits simultaneously. The Avengers fell where they stood—each cocooned, _trapped_ inside the suits meant to rescue them. They could no longer hear each other. They could no longer communicate with JARVIS. Tony, Bruce, Steve, Clint, and Natasha could only squirm in their narrow prisons as the remaining HYDRA agents dragged their bodies into the helicopter.

 

\----------

 

Little jolts of color interrupted the pure night behind Tony’s eyes. His retinas ached. Something in the space behind his eyes throbbed. After another ten minutes he was able to see vague, blurry outlines of the dark interior of a prison cell lined on all sides with vertical iron bars. He saw Steve, Nat, and Clint sitting up and blinking nearby. And there, leaning against one wall, were two cryogenic tubes. Thor and Bruce’s still faces stared, unseeing and unblinking, behind the white tinged glass.

 

Hands snaked under Tony’s armpits and strong arms lifted him up onto his feet. Steve made sure Tony could stand before he moved to the tubes. Stark followed, and repeatedly kicked until his boot burst through the glass dome. Steve yanked the entire door off and frisbee-ed it aside. Stark ducked halfway into the tube and quickly plucked a few stray shards of glass out of Bruce’s dark, frost-tipped hair. “Banner.” Stark patted the scientist’s cold cheek. “Bruce, wake up.” Color gradually returned to Bruce’s skin, but his breathing remained lethargic.

 

On their left, Clint and Natasha broke the lock to Thor’s tube. The pair scampered out of the way when Thor, unhampered by the same restraints applied to Bruce to keep him upright, toppled forward like an axed tree. The god landed nose-first on the floor. He woke up swearing and swinging. Tiles cracked beneath his punching fists. The temper tantrum stopped less than five seconds after it started. Thor went limp—not unconscious, but nearly so. It took all of Clint and Nat’s strength to roll him over onto his back and get him to sit up. Steve grasped the god’s arm and spoke to him, gently.

 

Tony clasped Bruce by the shoulders and squeezed. “Come on, buddy, naptime is over.” He cupped Bruce’s cheeks tight like he was trying to stop a bleeding wound. No response. Tony’s stomach cramped. He lifted himself up onto his tiptoes until he was nose-to-nose with his friend. Gently, almost paternally, Tony leaned his forehead against Bruce’s, then pulled them tighter together by clamping his hand behind the back of the scientist’s neck. “Bruce—come on, buddy—you’re supposed to be indestructible.”

 

“Tired.” The word sounded like barely more than an exhale. Tony expected to meet brown eyes when he looked up, but Bruce’s were still closed. A dry tongue tried to wet dry lips. The shivering stated. Bruce convulsed—limbs, torso, chest. Teeth chattered so quick and hard that Tony half-expected them to crack. Rubbing Bruce’s arms didn’t seem to make a difference, but Tony kept doing it anyway.

 

“You’re ok, Bruce.”

 

“ _Tony_?”

 

“I’m right here, buddy. I’m right here.” Stark took a deep breath. “Think you can walk?”

 

Bruce grimaced when he swallowed. “Try,” he whispered.

 

“Cap?” Tony called. “Need your help.” Bruce’s eyes opened but, abruptly, closed again. His chin bobbed against his chest. He and Thor weren’t wounded, but their time spent in cryo had weakened them significantly. Both were crippled. “ _Steve_!”

 

“Got him.” Steve returned to Tony’s side and ripped Bruce’s restraints apart—ankles, legs, middle, arms, wrists. Bruce couldn’t stand, let alone walk. He collapsed, almost landing on his knees, but Steve and Tony caught him, helped him sit. Two trembling hands found the fabric over Tony’s heart and grasped it hard. Bruce, leaning back against Steve’s chest, tugged Tony down until he was sandwiched tight between his two friends. Four arms wrapped around him, rubbed his skin, held him close until the shivering stopped.

 

Suddenly, Clint shouted, “ _Why the hell won’t you just go away_?” Everyone turned to see what he was looking at. There, standing beyond the bars, was Clint’s ex-friend John Bloom.

 

“I missed you!” Bloom cracked his knuckles, blinking innocently. “You and I keep bumping into each other, Barton. Must be fate. I wonder how this story of ours ends?”

 

“When one of us is dead,” Clint figured.

 

All humor disintegrated from the HYDRA agent’s expression. “How about when all of you are dead?”

 

“Clever. Good banter. A bit cliché, but it gets the job done.”

 

Bloom shrugged a small, skinny rifle off his back and cocked it. “You still don’t get it, do you? You still don’t get that you’re the villain of this story, and I’m the hero. And, frankly? Neither of us matter in the grand scheme—the grand scheme of SHIELD vs. HYDRA. I don’t matter. You don’t matter. That means our deaths won’t matter.”

 

“My deaths matters to me, thanks,” Clint declared. “Surrender right now, old friend. I’ll escort you to the Raft myself, and this will be over.”

 

“It’ll never be over. When I kill you, Romanoff will kill me. Then Delancey or Jackson will kill her, and so on and so on. This won’t end well for either of us, Barton. So, you might as well shut up and enjoy this pit stop here in Wellington. HYDRA doesn’t have a floating maximum security prison, but I hear the cells in our ice caves outside of the McMurdo Airforce base are really very accommodating.”

 

“We’re in New Zealand?” Bruce spoke with a slur. “One of the HYDRA bases… One of the ones from the hack… In New Zealand…”

 

“Boring here, really. Just a place to refuel before we head to Antarctica. Have to entertain myself.” Bloom cocked his rifle. “You’re fish in a barrel but that doesn’t mean you aren’t good target practice. Need you to stay unconscious for the next leg of the journey, anyway.” Bloom grinned. His trigger finger snapped.

 

Blue electricity swirled around the taser dart meant for Tony. Steve intercepted it—with his chest. His body convulsed. A line of blood leaked from his nostril to his lip. Chuckling, Bloom reloaded, and shot again. Nat, Clint, Tony, Thor, and Bruce went down one after the other.

 

Bloom sighed with satisfaction. Dr. List, who stood behind him, interlocked his arms and hugged them against his chest. “Are you done with these childish antics, Agent Bloom?”

 

Bloom shot a second dart into Thor’s backside. He said, under his breath, “Oh, I haven’t even begun to play with them.”

 

**To Be Continued**


	22. The Execution

**PRESENT**

 

Clint watched, fascinated, as Bloom yanked the knife out of his side as quickly, as savagely as he’d plunged it in. He cleaned the blood off with Barton’s sleeve before he sheathed it in a thigh holster. How strange, Clint thought, to see blood leaking from your side yet not feel the wound. Had to be the cold…

 

Grinning, Bloom flicked Clint’s nose with his thumb and middle finger and, just like that, Barton collapsed to his knees. The skewering Antarctic air entered his body through the knife wound and Clint shivered as if his internal organs had frozen. In his peripheral vision he saw Banner stumble across the deck of the ship with less grace than a drunk. Bruce’s knees gave out once, twice, three times, but he kept getting up. Clint wasn’t sure if Banner purposefully or accidentally toppled over the side of the ship into the ocean. It didn’t matter—not really. If he was in the water, then he was as dead as Tony.

 

Clint considered his own impending death. Would HYDRA just kick his body into the water? Would Natasha have to tell his kids and his pregnant wife that his body was most likely eaten by a whale?

 

On the opposite side of his peripheral vision, Clint witnessed two dozen HYDRA agents corralling Steve towards starboard. Natasha, who’d squirreled up one of the cranes to take a sniper’s position, took a few out with well-placed shots, but that didn’t stop the crowd’s momentum. Steve disappeared in the center of the mob’s flailing fists.

 

Dammit, Clint thought. After everything they’d gone through as a team it was all going to end today, like this. Cold and bloody.

 

Bloom unsheathed his one remaining clean knife. He examined it in the sunlight and must have decided something important, because he smiled like he was in love with it. Clint watched, helpless, as Bloom raised the weapon…

 

**30 MINUTES BEFORE**

 

Tony’s world swayed like the time his mother held him, rocked him, when he couldn’t stop crying after a 72-hour drinking binge. He’d lied when he told her he didn’t remember the back of her hand against his cheek, her surprisingly strong arms helping him to bed, the sincerity of her “I love you.” Another regret on a very, very long list.

 

Skin against his neck. Tony awoke to find Steve leaning over him, fingers against his pulse point. “Figured your messed-up heart wouldn’t react well to getting tased.”

 

Stark blinked. “Am I dead?”

 

“Your heartbeat is… Irregular.”

 

Stark shrugged. “Most of me is ‘irregular.’”

 

A fond smile. “Won’t argue that.” Steve paused, then held out both hands. Tony took them, allowed the captain to help him sit up against a beige iron wall that curved at the ceiling. “We’re on a ship.”

 

“The stern of a cargo ship,” Barton announced. He stood on the unconscious Thor’s back like he was a stepstool, and stared out of a steering-wheel-sized porthole. “I can see the shadows of the cranes on the icebergs.”

 

“ _Icebergs_?”

 

Natasha knelt on her haunches next to Tony. “Not sure how long we were asleep, but we’re definitely somewhere in the Antarctic Circle.” Her exhales froze in midair.

 

Tony rubbed his arms through his torn sleeves. Barton bounced down from Thor’s back, then ripped the drugged god’s red cape off and draped it across Tony’s shoulders. Bruce staggered across the brig, then—pupils different sizes, hands and knees shaking—still drugged up. Nat helped him sit beside Tony who stretched the cape to cover both of their shoulders. “Thanks,” Bruce said with a honey-thick voice. “It’s a little cold, isn’t it?”

 

Everyone noticed the blue tinge to Bruce’s lips. Rogers and Barton shared a look. Something unspoken passed between them. Clint turned back to Thor and dragged the god across the deck to lie, curled into a ball, in the center of their little half-circle. The Avengers closed ranks to share body heat. Bruce and Tony linked arms. Steve sat on Tony’s right and Clint on Banner’s left. Natasha stretched herself on her stomach across all four boys’ laps. Barton sunk his fingers into her hair and rubbed head tenderly. Bruce poked her waist like he couldn’t comprehend what it was. Everyone scooted as close to one another as possible.

 

Tony busied himself with arranging Banner’s black uniform so that it didn’t scrunch up under his armpits. “It you tell anyone about this, I’ll deny it,” Tony threatened everyone when he rested his head against Steve’s shoulder. His body went lax, weak.

 

Steve squeezed his upper arm. “Tony?”

 

“I’m fine,” Tony insisted quieter than they all expected. “You shouldn’t have taken that bullet for me, Cap.”

 

“Of course, I should have.” Steve waited patiently for Stark’s eyes to meet his. “You’re hurting. How bad is it?”

 

Stark shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll be at HYDRA’s base soon enough. If we don’t escape, we’ll spend the rest of our very short lives watching Thor drool.”

 

Everyone looked at the god, surprised to see him stirring awake. Thor, trying but failing to replicate an Earth gesture, raised his ring finger in Stark’s direction. “I’m not drooling,” he said, drool unspooling from the left side of his mouth.

 

The equally drugged, crippled Banner snorted. “There’s mouth on your drool,” he informed him.

 

One of them started chuckling. The others joined in. More than one held their stomachs by the time the laughter fizzled out. “In case I don’t get another chance to say this,” Steve said, “I want each of you to know that it’s been an honor to work with you.”

 

“Oh, don’t do this,” Barton wished.

 

“Each of you is crucial, critical to this team. Wouldn’t be the same without you. I’m proud of you—proud of us. The world is better because you’re in it.”

 

“Hear-hear,” Natasha agreed. “Love you…You idiots.”

 

“I have something to say.” Tony lifted his head. He cleared his throat. He made eye contact with each of them one at a time. Then he sighed, said “No, I don’t,” and rolled his eyes at himself.

 

“Nice to have friends,” Bruce said. “That’s all I’ve got.”

 

“I’ve got nothing.” Clint avoided everyone’s gaze. “Well, maybe. Maybe I could say something like… Well, you guys don’t suck.”

 

Steve snorted. “Very moving, Barton.”

 

Bruce suddenly spat out a short, amused laugh. “Remember… Remember the look on Loki’s face when we surrounded him in the Tower? Priceless.”

 

Clint grinned at the memory. “All that shawarma we ate. God, that was gross. Did I mention it was gross? So hungry, though. I would’ve eaten anything.”

 

“Anything?” A sparkle in Steve’s eye—a mute laugh. “What about the three-legged dog on that billboard Thor destroyed the night we first met Bloom?”

 

A sparkle in Thor’s eye—a mute tear. “If we survive, I shall adopt the three-legged dog and… and declare him a prince of Asgard!”

 

“That kid we found in the rubble, Steve, remember that?” Bruce asked.

 

Rogers nodded. “Klein. Hope he’s recovered. Remember the look on Stark’s face when he heard Barton in the vent above my hospital bed?”

 

“I knew he was there,” Tony lied. “You guys didn’t fool me.”

 

“You hugged that bomb,” Bruce recalled in awe. “Geeze, Tony…”

 

“And you gave me your suit,” Natasha whispered. “Geeze…”

 

Tony blushed. “Hulk ripped my broken suit off me. And he carried out asses halfway through Kentucky. And you…” Stark elbowed Bruce gently in the ribs. “You kept Barton, Rogers and I alive in that cabin. Never thanked you for that…”

 

“Have you ever thanked anyone for anything?” Nat wondered.

 

“I just did, didn’t I?”

 

“Acknowledging that you should’ve thanked Bruce isn’t the same as thanking him,” Barton pointed out.

 

Tony harrumphed. “Well, if I’m about to die… I’m not going to start saying ‘thank you’ now!”

 

Steve’s turn to elbow Tony. “You pretended to have amnesia when you woke up in that Kentucky cabin. Almost punched you.”

 

Stark summoned his most dashing grin. “Go ahead. Might be your last chance.”

 

“Don’t tempt me.”

 

Natasha rubbed her cheek against Clint’s thigh. “Remember the parade? Remember that guy made of bricks?”

 

“Remember Coulson in an Iron Man suit?” said Steve softly.

 

Clint joined in. “Remember the wedding cake I knocked over?”

 

Tony piled on. “Remember my bet with Coulson?”

 

“Remember that doctor Choo—Cho—So? Beautiful,” Thor sighed. “ _Hottie_. Correct word, yes? Hottie?”

 

“Almost shot her,” Clint reminded Natasha.

 

Thor fingered his uniform. He twisted his head and frowned at his shoulder. “Where’s is my mother’s drapes—red drapes?” he garbled.

 

Another round of chuckling—softer, this time. Reserved… Hopeless.

 

Steve sighed. “How the hell are we going to get out of this, team?”

 

The door flew open just then. John Bloom stood in the threshold wearing a bright grin. “That won’t be necessary,” he said to Cap. To the group he said, “On your feet, Avengers. My crew is getting a little bored. Time for some entertainment.” Bloom, Delancey, and Jackson led the six stumbling teammates to the top deck of the cargo ship at gunpoint. Three dozen HYDRA agents waited in a wide oval on the only part of the deck not covered in tubes, cartons, and cargo boxes.

 

Thor squinted in the bright sunlight multiplied by both the clear water and the white of the nearby icebergs. “What is occurring?” he demanded.

 

Stark found the best explanation. “You know how in that pirate movie—in _every_ pirate movie—there’s a scene where the bad guys make the good guys walk the plank? I, uh, I think we’re going overboard.”

 

“Figuratively?” Bruce asked, slurring the last syllable. “Or literally?”

 

Bloom gestured for one of his shipmates to walk forward. The giant of a man held what looked like a two-foot-long machete. He swung it with such ease that it might have been an extension of his own arm. “Here’s the thing,” Bloom said to them, but loud enough for everyone on the ship to hear. “The HYDRA base on the seventh continent is a little… Crammed. Overcrowded. Jam-packed. Which means that bringing in six more prisoners is even more of a pain in the ass than usual. But, lucky for us, the heads of HYDRA have given me permission to, well, decrease the population. One of you will not be leaving this ship. Not alive, at least.”

 

All six Avengers staggered backwards—directly into a solid line of agents. There was nowhere to go.

 

“And—and this is the fun part,” said Bloom. “The fun part is that we’re going to let fate choose which one of you we’re executing today.” A woman, Doll, emerged from the crowd and handed Bloom a large aluminum mug. “Six names in here,” he announced, and held the cup up high. “Five will live—one will die!” The HYDRA agents all clapped and cheered. Many yelled out their choices:

 

“Cut Barton’s head off!”

 

“Throw Stark overboard!”

 

“Take the Hulk apart!”

 

Bloom resembled a ringmaster in a circus. He circled the floor with the mug held above his head. Agents offered him money to forego the lottery and assassinate who they preferred. Others wanted to pull out the name themselves. Most just jeered—anxious for blood. Rough hands and arms kept the Avengers still. They held their collective breath.

 

Bloom shouted for silence. Everyone obeyed. He plucked out a white piece of paper and unfolded it with one hand. Then he nodded at the machete-wielding executioner. “Bring the god forward!”

 

“ _No_!” Steve, Clint, and Tony all fought back when Jackson and Delancey dragged Thor away from them. The helpless, drugged-up god was forced to his knees in the center of the ring. HYDRA agents threw trash and boots and crumpled up pieces of paper at him but, dazed, Thor didn’t even notice. Five hearts leapt into five throats when the executioner leveled the machete with Thor’s unprotected neck, and then raised it.

 

“Thor, get up!” Cap’s voice broke through every other’s. “Fight back, Thor, fight back!”

 

Dizzy, confused, completely out of it, Thor looked up at his friends with wide eyes full of questions. And then, to their shock—

 

-he _winked_.

 

Mjolnir entered the scene like a bomb. The hammer punched straight through the executioner’s torso and he dropped the machete right into Thor’s open hand. The other snatched the hammer out of the sky and lightning erupted from it. Thor spun, tornado like, and used both the machete and the hammer to take down every HYDRA agent within reach.

 

_Chaos_.

 

The other six Avengers took Thor’s cue and sprang into action. Steve sprinted at the biggest agent in the group. Natasha wrestled a gun away. Barton tackled Bloom.

 

Tony barely got ten feet before a bunch of agents overwhelmed him. They dragged him to the edge of the ship, and then tossed him into the water.

 

**PRESENT**

 

Thor wound up the hammer and sent it towards Barton and Bloom. It zipped through the narrow space between the knife and Clint’s throat, which gave the archer a split second of mindfulness to react.

 

He knocked the knife out of Bloom’s hand.

 

He caught the knife before it hit the deck.

 

He kicked, swinging his legs low and knocking Bloom onto his back.

 

He flipped up to his feet and held the knife up high like Bloom had only seconds before.

 

“You know how I know you’re the bad guy?” Barton asked. “The bad guys always lose.”

 

Clint thrust the knife down…

 

…and stopped barely a centimeter from Bloom’s chest.

 

“You know how I know I’m the good guy? Because, the good guys _do good_ ,” Barton declared. “On your stomach, Bloom. Hand me those zip ties in your pocket. And don’t move—I won’t ask again.”

 

Steve resembled lava erupting from a volcano when he leapt right out of the mob. He flipped over the group and landed beneath the crane Natasha occupied. She shouted his name and dropped her gun right into his arms. Steve pointed the weapon at Jackson and Delancey. The rest of the crowd parroted the pair when they raised their hands in surrender. A nod from Steve and the entire pack obediently retreated downstairs and allowed themselves to be locked in the brig.

 

Once the prisoners were secure, Clint, Steve, Natasha, and Thor rushed to the side of the boat both Stark and Banner had disappeared over. Clint, holding his wounded side, scanned the blue water and white icebergs for any sign of them. He found none. Natasha buried her face against Barton’s sternum. Steve wrapped his arms around Nat’s waist and squeezed. Thor bowed his head.

 

Bruce and Tony were gone.

 

A roar behind them. Hulk breached the water like a great white shark. He exploded out of the ocean and landed on the deck with a still Stark in his shivering green arms. Ice coated Tony’s hair. His skin was iceberg-white except for his lips, which were blue. Water soaked his thin clothes.

 

Steve took Tony out of Hulk’s arms. He was surprised to find the inventor awake. “Hol-y shi-t,” Tony managed between chattering teeth. Droplets of freezing water soaked Cap’s boots. “Oh God, Cap, can’t feel my feet. Can’t feel my… Anything.”

 

“Hang on.” Steve shook him. “Stay with me, Tony. Everyone, follow me!”

 

The cargo ship’s bridge, the warmest and most isolated part of the ship, was on the top deck. Steve kicked down the door where they found both the captain and his first mate backed against the wall with their hands raised. Clint’s body chose to stop working, then. He collapsed against Thor, who supported him with one arm. Natasha ordered Steve to set Tony on the floor and for Thor to put Clint beside him. Cursing, hands shaking, Natasha got to work stripping the waterlogged clothes off Tony while Steve pressed every inch of dry clothing they had against Clint’s wound.

 

Steve checked Tony’s pulse. “The shock fixed your heart. The beat’s regular again.”

 

“Worth it, then.” Tony’s dazed eyes watched Natasha undress him. “And this you _can_ tell everyone about this. Won’t deny it… Aren’t you supposed to take your clothes off and snuggle with me?”

 

“Shut up, Stark,” Nat snapped. She winced at the force behind her words. Cupping Tony’s face she said, “Just try to stay awake.”

 

“Yes ma’am.” Tony’s eyes slid shut. “Pancakes…”

 

Steve looked at the cold icicles forming in Tony’s hair and the hot blood pooling around Clint’s abdomen. His face went hot and his blood went cold. He got to his feet, yanked the ship’s steering wheel into reverse, and increased its speed.

 

**To Be Concluded**


	23. Some Other Beginning’s End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn’t the original ending I envisioned. But then I had a very, very weird dream… 
> 
> Please note that the plot of ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ begins at the end of this story. Should be a seamless transition from the fan fic into the movie. 
> 
> Don’t forget to review!

Midnight had come and gone. No darkness on earth was deeper than Antarctica’s—no starlight brighter. Thor and Cap stood counting icebergs on a pile of cargo crates from the bow of the ship. Whenever Mjolnir’s lightning sunk one chunk of ice, two more took its place. There were too many—too much between them and McMurdo Station. The ship had only moved thirty meters in three hours…

 

Steve pivoted and looked at the bridge window. “We gotta get him there soon.”

 

“We do, indeed.” Thor raised his hammer to unleash lightning, then lowered it. “Perhaps a plan, D?”

 

“Plan B,” Steve softly corrected. Blue eyes logged everything on deck: pails, tarps, binoculars, crumpled star charts, life rafts, chains, nets, harpoons, mops, flashlights, life vests, guns, knives, spent bullets, waterproof boots… “Thor, how much weight can you actually lift?”

 

Thor stuck his chest out. “More than The Hulk can.”

 

Steve rolled his eyes. “Could you carry Stark and Barton? Could you carry all five of us?”

 

“Well…” Thor clenched his lower lip between both rows of teeth and rolled it between them. “It is not… Impossible.”

 

“Then I have an idea. It’s a lousy idea.”

 

Thor’s nostrils flared. He puffed out his cheeks. “Share it, Captain.”

 

“Ever heard of that story about where babies come from? About the stork?”

 

The god raised one eyebrow, then the other. “Captain… Mortal children are conceived when—”

 

Steve held both hands up. “Stop right there.” He gestured for Thor to follow him down to the deck. Once there, Steve rooted through several barrels until he found the biggest, sturdiest rope fishing net he could. “You’re the stork, Thor. If we all fit in this net, could you and your hammer carry us to McMurdo?”

 

Thor took out a roll of thin iron chains. He looped it around the net, and then through his belt buckle. “Without dropping any of you into the water? Perhaps. But can Stark survive the trip? I won’t be able to fly very high. Exposure to the cold air, spray off the water… Romanoff said it is a bad sign that he no longer shivers.”

 

Steve fingered a blue tarp. He estimated how many life vests could fit in a reinforced net, and how many blankets on top of them. “We’ll build a nest,” he concluded. “We’re alone out here. Who knows how long it’ll be before we can get this boat moving again? We have to risk it. We have to.”

 

Thor’s nose crumpled. “Our arrival at the base will not look particularly… Dignified…”

 

Half an hour later, Steve left Thor standing beside the outstretched net and returned to the bridge. He found his teammates right where he left them: the nearly-naked Bruce shivering alone in one corner, Clint unconscious on the floor with his abdomen wrapped mummy-tight, and Natasha snuggled up with Stark under every blanket they could find. The blue tinge on Tony’s lips had spread to his cheeks. His eyes widened when he saw Steve and he said, in a childlike voice, “Captain America?”

 

Nat raised her nose from Tony’s neck. “He’s disoriented. Losing it. Not enough blood is getting to his brain,” she explained. “Doesn’t remember what happened or where he is.”

 

Tony frowned at her red hair. “Pepper, turn up the heat!” He coughed up another mouthful of saltwater and spat it on Clint’s boots.

 

“He thinks the steering wheel is Obadiah Stane,” Nat sighed.

 

“My dad,” Tony mumbled. He blinked, then his eyes shut. “Where’s my dad?”

 

Steve’s throat was dry, empty, but he swallowed like it was full. “Can he move? Can he _be_ moved?”

 

Natasha shook her head twice. “His muscles aren’t working anymore. Temp is down to 92 Fahrenheit. Extremities are numb… Steve, we need to do something soon. Another blanket isn’t going to cut it.”

“I know. I know…” Steve exhaled sharply, then crouched onto his haunches and slid his open palms under Tony’s body. “Plan B.”

“Cozy,” Banner decided when the teammates all dogpiled into the fishing net. The layers: metal chains, rope net, tarp, inflated life vests, Banner, Steve and Tony, and then Clint and Natasha. “If all your weight on me brings out The Other Guy, his weight will sink us quick.”

Steve arranged the now unconscious Tony into a fetal position against his own body. Then he wrapped as much of himself around his friend as he could to not only keep him warm, but protected during the bumpy ride. “Thor, we’re as ready as we’re going to be,” he called.

 

“Hold still, little babies,” Thor said completely seriously.

 

“Fly high, big bird,” Nat said completely un-seriously.

 

“Everybody hold on,” said Steve.

 

“To what?” Bruce disappeared under the mound of life vests and body parts as Thor rose into the air.

 

The god carried his bundle of superheroes off the stranded ship, over the road of icebergs, past a curious colony of penguins, towards a bright red light on the horizon. He saw the giant letter “H” on top of a wide building on the edge of the continent and recognized it as the roof of a hospital. Three dozen personnel in neon orange snowsuits stood waiting on the roof when the Avengers arrived.

 

**ONE WEEK LATER**

 

Natasha was so excited that she passed the Avengers Tower elevator and darted straight up the stairs. Like a football player with a ball, she cradled a tablet computer tight against her middle. She didn’t knock on the sickbay door, didn’t open it slowly, didn’t care that she startled Thor out of a deep nap and nearly caused the anxious Banner to transform. “News!” she announced, and handed Steve the tablet. She glanced at Tony sitting up in bed and her face briefly fell. “Good and bad news… Boss.”

 

Tony shared a look with the man in the next bed. “Boss?” he mouthed. Clint shrugged in reply. The whole team looked beyond exhausted—overwhelmed by the events of recent months. They wore identical semicircles under their eyes like matching tattoos. And, also identically, they swarmed around Steve and the computer.

 

“And this is… What?” Rogers prompted.

 

Nat folded her arms and smiled. “Just finished analyzing all of the data from the cargo ship,” she announced. “And guess what I found?”

 

“More Enhanced beings?” Tony guessed.

 

“More weapons?” guessed Clint.

 

Steve, in mourning, guessed, “My shield?”

 

“Yes!” Nat gasped. “I mean, no. Yes, the McMurdo team found it in a cargo shipment—don’t worry, it’s in the mail—but no, that’s not what I came here to tell you.”  

 

Thor aimed Mjolnir at her like a gun. “Speak, Widow of Blackness.”

 

Natasha hesitated. “Like the sound of that,” she decided. Then she pointed at a blinking light in the middle of a world map on the computer. “Sokovia,” she said. “We found Loki’s scepter. _It’s in Sokovia_!”

 

“No way,” Clint breathed. His face, still pale from his recovery, flushed red with excitement. “We did it!”

 

“We did.”

 

“We’ll end it,” Steve whispered. Thor raised his hammer and shook it, proudly.

 

“We could end it tomorrow if we wanted,” Bruce realized.

 

“Tomorrow!” Thor roared.

 

Natasha pointed at Clint’s bandaged body. “How about next week,” she recommended.

 

Tony pointed at Natasha. “And I’ll be the boss!” His grin was even bigger than Thor’s. “Coulson loses the bet which means—lady and gentlemen— _I’m going to be the director of SHIELD_!”

 

The other Avengers, as one, groaned… And then smiled.  

 

**The End**

Thanks for reading!


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